It's rant time: Web design as a whole is piss poor. Web designers have forgotten what design is. I'm a web designer and I hate you, your designer friends and myself.

Ok, maybe I've had a little too much red bull this morning, but this has been bubbling about in my brain for months.

Design is the science of communication. As a designer, it is your job to interpret a brief and conceptualize the best way to communicate the message to your audience. This is true whether you design for print, web, or make baseball caps for special schools. I feel that this fundamental approach has been completely ignored by 99% of professional web designers, and in turn, sacrificed for flashy interactions and design trends that serve no purpose.

"But wait!" I hear you say, "That floral footer for my design blog I spent three days making looks really cool and strengthens the branding of my site. Plus it has a really cool parallax scrolling thing when you resize the window. It's awesome!". No it isn't. Sure, it's pretty and trendy, and some of your users might think - "Wow, thats cool", but consider it's actual importance. What purpose does it serve? It doesn't strengthen your branding, because there are a million other sites out there that have a floral footer. Does it help convey the information contained in the footer? It might do in some small way, but if you think about it objectively it doesn't take much head scratching to realize that there are much better ways to represent that information. If you're building a website for a florist, who want to create a beautiful and dainty atmosphere for the brand, then maybe a floral footer is a good choice, but for fuck sake don't plaster your design agency's website with tacky deviant art flower silhouettes - what's does it actually achieve?

"What about that rotating slideshow on my portfolio page? I'm using this sweet jQuery plugin to create a 3D effect." Why are you using it? Because it looks cool, or because it was the most contextually appropriate way of displaying that information? Interactive animated content is my speciality, so I'm not one to shy away from said techniques, but there has to be a reason behind it. For example, the client has sent through a five page .doc with their 'about' information, the only problem is that it has to fit in a 450 x 300 block on one page. This would be the perfect opportunity to add a layer of interaction that allows the user to browse the content in a meaningful way. Each slide elaborates on the previous one, allowing the user to gain as much understanding as they need. It's not there because it's a "sweet effect that everyone's doing", it's there because it's a solution to communication problem.

I used to read design blogs such as smashing magazine, noupe, etc etc, but every single 'Top 100 RSS buttons' article made me shudder. You can't just pick and choose a cool style randomly to use for an element on a page, even if it fits thematically with the rest of your design. Each element should be considered. Why do your buttons have gradient backgrounds? Is it because it's a design trend, or is it because you want to draw attention from the other elements of your site that use block colour backgrounds? Why do you have a drop down menu? Is it because it's a cool example of a l33t bit of javascript you found that fades the menus nicely, or is it because it's the best way to represent your site structure? All these questions seemed to be ignored by a majority of the web design community.

I don't want this to be a Nielson style rant, I'm not against visual flair by any means, my issues stem from the lack of consideration by most web designers. Too many designers rely on 'design trends' to shape the branding of their projects, without considering the implications. By relying on design trends you're ignoring the most important skill of being a designer, the conceptual process. A good designer doesn't scour the design blogs for inspiration before starting a project, a good designer outlines the goals of the project, the tone of the message being communicated and then considers the best way to realize their findings.

The upside of all this lack of consideration, is that amateurs now have tools where they can create "professional grade" sites with relative ease. The internet is the repository of all (most?) human knowledge and as web designers it is our job to display that information in the best way possible. At the moment, we're failing. I'm failing, you're failing, we're all failing. A designer is an artist, a scientist, a psychologist, an historian, an archivist and many more roles wrapped up into one bundle. We should start fucking acting like it.

So...err...discuss?

tl;dr: There is not enough consideration in web design. There should be reason behind the style and placement of every element. Design trends are subjective, step away from trends and spend more time thinking about the project objectively.

EDIT: Ok, when I posted this I was having a shitty morning, so it does come off a little aggressive and arrogant. For that I am sorry, but I do still stand by points. To clarify, I feel that I am just as guilty as the next person, and I'm trying to change the way I approach web design. This wasn't meant as a "everyone else sucks, I'm great" rant, rather a talking point about the creative process.