Bound to change

Things change at the ‘speed of tech’. When we started designing back in the early 1980s, we used Xacto knives and waxers. By the start of the 1990s, we’d begun using desktop computers loaded with software from Quark and Adobe. And these basic software tools took us through the entire decade and into the start of the 2000s. 

But even those software tools are left in the dust these days. As designers, we moved rapidly towards using Adobe Flash and websites coded (by hand) using HTML. By 2003, even tabular HTML were receding in favor of Cascading Style Sheets and scripted databases for content. By 2005, things shifted again, to basic “content management systems” (CMSes). And by the end of the decade even more sophisticated CMSes and coding tools like Ajax, jQuery, and HTML5. Even before the end of 2010, social networking was now sweeping yet another tool into the communications mix that we designers must master and integrate.

It’s breathtaking for designers to keep up with the pace of change, as it can be for clients. But customers and clients expect the latest tools. And let’s face it: contemporary software allows an incredible amount of interactivity. Not just between client and website, but also between customer community and client.

So what have we done here with our portfolio site? We’ve rebuilt it from scratch using WordPress 3, for one. We’ve completely dropped Flash in favor of jQuery elements so that things remain visible and interactive on iPads and smartphones. We’ve added ways to interact and respond to our work here. We’ve connected this site to our Facebook andLinkedIn pages.

We’ve updated everything, basically. It’d be nice to think we’re done. But as with everything “Web”, it’s a fast-flowing river. For better or worse, our design practice will continue to swim with the currents.

Enjoy looking around here. It’s bound to change.