The cascade isn't just for style sheets it's also for website style guides

I’m a firm believer that if you are designing for the web it is essential to have a solid grasp of what it takes to build your own website. I’m not saying that every web designer needs to be a web developer (yes, there is a difference), but that without understanding current web standards, knowing web conventions and what technology solutions are available you’re really missing a huge chunk of your web design foundation. These things aren’t there to hold you back from coming up with new solutions. They are there to help you decide what is a good idea and what isn’t. Creativity is not at odds with convention.

Hey design community! My name's Nicole and I'm a graphic designer based out of Edmonton, Alberta working for these dudes in Lacombe. I'll be blogging every so often on matters close to my heart: print design. Above all, I'd love to facilitate a conversation on design... so whether you agree or disagree with me, please just speak up!

It seems every other week, a web designer tells me the jig is up, my days as a print designer are numbered. Didn't you hear? About this thing called the internets? It's going to make print design obsolete. Some days, amid facebook and twitter and the increasing amount of time I spend online, I worry they're right.

But most days I smile smugly and let them talk, secure in knowing that my job is safe because one thing the digital world can't replicate is tangibility. They can't manufacture the emotional resonance that comes with turning pages or holding a well-designed business card in your hand.

More than that, print design is evolving. They said that television would kill radio. It didn't, it just serves a different purpose now. As print designers we need to focus on doing the things we do, and doing them better. With purpose. Let's not get hung up on what the internet is taking away from our livelihood and instead look at the needs it's creating, what it can't do. Some schools of thought in design say simplicity is the key: you must remove, remove, remove. If you don't need it, it shouldn't be there.

Let's remove the antiquated practice of mass mail-outs and create better promotional materials that our audience will want to hang onto instead of put out with the recycling. Let's remove the idea that the web and print have to compete, let them work in tandem. By removing the excess that web can obviously do better than print, we can all focus, redirect our clients' energy (and budget) and instead showcase print design's strengths.

I’ve been giving quite a bit of thought lately to the concept of trust in business. Not so long ago if you went to town to buy a cow, you went from seller to seller, looked them in the eye, talked a bit. If your gut told you something was a bit off you’d walk on to the next seller. Eventually you’d settle on a cow, a seller and a price – maybe a couple of nice chickens or your firstborn – and shake hands on the deal. That thing with the gut was called trust.

Fast forward a few years and we started exchanging little discs of metal for our goods and services, removing ourselves from the actual things we were trading. Then came companies and stock markets. It’s pretty safe to say the whole trust part of the transaction got pretty strained for awhile there.

Now here we are in the 21^st century: paying for goods and services with pieces of plastic that represent the amount of little shiny discs a bank is willing to lend you. We buy books from Amazon, music from iTunes and everything else on eBay – all without once speaking to another human being. We entrust our identities and finances to brands; PayPal has our credit cards, Google our email and Facebook our personal information. No eye contact, no handshake – it’s a bit flaky sometimes but we still trust.

So what does this have to do with design? Actually, as it turns out, quite a bit.