All in the <head> – Ponderings and code by Drew McLellan –

The IC-Style

According to Joe Clark I am a perpetrator or what he calls The International Compliant Style of site design. I’m not sure how to take that. I guess to be cited as an example means that I have executed my design style well. My site is in the IC-Style, not emulating it. That has to be good.

On the flip side, Joe is saying that my design is a mass-produced unoriginal. That said, simple, clean, easy-to-read and ‘less is more’ are hardly original concepts, so I’m pretty happy in my unoriginality. The vast majority of sites that try to be avant-garde (like the Flash examples Joe cites) fail to make good on their intentions and end up obscuring their content in the process. I know I don’t have the design skills to be able to pull off a really usable, visually stunning design and besides, that’s not what my site is about. That’s not what you’re here for.

So I guess I’m happy in my IC-Style. At least if I’m going to be part of this I’m going to do it well.

– 22 September 2003 –

7 Responses

22 Sep 2003

Jesse

I thought the armadillo on the head was rather original…

22 Sep 2003

Eduardo

OMG, Is that a C-Section or an Appendectomy that Mr Clark has goin on?

23 Sep 2003

Jean-FranÃ§ois Bastien

Jesse, of course the armadillo is original, but as per point IX:

confine decoration, illustration, or photography to a nameplate-like page header, which could be rendered as a replaced image

23 Sep 2003

Joe Clark

At no time did I use any terms remotely resembling ”mass-produced” or ”unoriginal.” Do some more reading on graphic-design styles. Members of a movement do not necessarily know they are part of it any more than butterflies know they are flying through air.

And by the way, the IC-Style isn’t the only way to achieve ”simple, clean, easy-to-read.” I’m always wary of any design criticism that includes the word ”clean”; I usually hear that from Windows-using middle managers who can’t match their ties and socks.

23 Sep 2003

Drew

Hey, quit the mud-slinging. Play nice.

Read my post again. You’ve classified my work as being part of a design movement, which I don’t deny or even object to. I’m perfectly happy with that. How could I not be, when that movement is based around core principals that I hold to be important. My work is part of this movement as a consequence of those principals and my implementation of them. Bundle the natural influence from the sort of sites I expose myself to on a regular basis, and that’s what you get.

The only way I could object was if I had designed my site to be the worst I could make it, under which circumstance I’d probably agree with you anyway.

So no need to get defensive.

23 Sep 2003

Jesse

Members of a movement do not necessarily know they are part of it any more than butterflies know they are flying through air.

The IC-Style seems more of an evolution where the best working design survives and flourishes. Sites will change but much more slowly than in the past 5 years or so and their designs will come from those innovators. But there will always be specialist designs.

I think it is like OS design.. Apple came up with a window’d desktop in 1984/85.. with big-ish changes happening in 1995 (win95) and 2001 with OS X.. but basically windows is what we all have still.

(yes large generalization but..)

24 Sep 2003

K

I think most people know as much about design as they know what’s going on underneath the hood of their auto.

I think this is always appropriate – http://www.adobe.com/web/features/zeldman20000821/main.html

Folks seem to want to embellish everything – filling every little space with ”something”. Designing something that looks good, is functional and useful, easy to use and likeable is difficult. As you were.