We admit to being a bit rushed when we went live with this site and we’re still experimenting with its look and feel. This is the direction we’re headed and, once we work the kinks out, we’ll apply it to the rest of the site. In the meantime things might be a bit confusing as you jump into and out of the blog.It’s the kind of design experience I usually like to rant about rather than create. 

This started out as a “Top Ten Newbie Web Mistakes” for my beginning web design students but it quickly became obvious that I couldn’t limit it to only ten. I was finally able to edit it down to 50. But I suspect, as soon as the comments start, it will begin growing again.

And, yes, I’ve made them all at one time or another.
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“Untitled Document” is the default page title for web pages created in Dreamweaver and a variety of other web page editors. According to Google “about 32,900,000″ with that title now populate the web. And, if you’re interested (which apparently few people are), according to Yahoo! the number is “about 44,700,000.”

I’m a bit behind in my design jargon, so I have to admit that this “experience design” thing kind of crept up on me. I probably would have blissfully ignored the whole phenomenon if I hadn’t discovered that the local AIGA design awards offered eight categories for ink on paper and grouped everything else – from websites to video to “environments” – under the heading of Experience Design.

Personally I gave up fancy titles a dozen or so years ago when I decided “information architect” sounded a bit pretentious for someone who created charts and maps for a newspaper. And I’ve been content to be a simple “web designer” for the last ten years so I was surprised to find I had suddenly become an “experience designer.” Well, if I’m going to be one, I should probably know what it is.
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While moving my office (a project comparable to an Indiana Jones archeological dig) it occurred to me that I might be a Designosaur.Now, the Urban Dictionary defines a Designosaur as, “A graphic designer who is behind the times in learning the latest technology. An outmoded artist or designer on the way to being extinct.” But I don’t buy it.To me a designosaur is a designer who traces his roots back to the pre-digital era, the days of T-squares, stat cameras and dry-transfer lettering.Sure a lot of Designosaurs have fossilized but some of us have, like T-Rex becoming a chicken, evolved to thrive in the digital age. With that definition in mind…
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