What do Bad Kissing and Working with Developers have in Common?
From the Webydo Blog
Maestro Matteo Bologna argues for the intimacy of in-browser website design.
Our plan was to interview maestro Matteo Bologna for another episode of “Design Talks,” our series of documentaries with the rock stars of the design world.
Sometimes described as the reincarnation of Salvador Dali, Matteo Bologna is the co-founder of the famous NY agency Mucca Design and president of The Type Director’s Club.
Matteo’s background is rooted in architecture, graphic design, illustration and typography. His team has crafted exquisite identities for a variety of brands, including Adobe, Barnes & Noble, Victoria’s Secret, Target, Whole Foods, Bacardi, and many more. Matteo is famed all around the world for thought-provoking lectures at conferences such as How Design Live and Adobe Max and for his offbeat sense of humor.
Therefore, despite our initial plan to have a serious interview with Matteo, we ended up with something completely different…
Dramatizing An Interview.
Matteo has strong opinions about the shift from working with developers to designing websites directly in the browser. We thought it will be interesting to see how working with Webydo affected his agency, Mucca Design.
However, bored by the cliches of branded videos and design documentaries, Matteo wanted to do this interview the ‘Mucca way.’ So, we ended up with an episode that is a hybrid between a serious interview and a satire of designers’ obsession with perfectionism.
Are You Suffering From Perfectionism?
Many visual thinkers feel the burden of perfectionism. However, Matteo explains that this artistic compulsion to perfect one’s work is the secret behind good design:
“We spend hours fussing over every pixel. Precision is what really makes the difference between good and bad design.”
Intimacy and Web Design.
The ability to control and perfect every pixel enables designers to create powerful experiences for their clients. In designing for print, designers have full creative control and can manifest this “obsession.” Print designers can be intimate with their designs, with no middlemen.
Matteo argues that a lack of this intimacy and creative control when designing websites is the reason for the ugly side of the online experience:
Since the coming of the Internet, designing and creating websites was a nightmare...You design in Photoshop and everything looks wonderful. So, then you hire developers, pay them a big chunk of the budget and instead of designing you spend most of your time explaining all the things that they fucked up.
The problem with the old way of creating websites is not a lack in talented developers.
When designers are dependent on developers to translate their designs, they lose their creative control. Matteo provides a powerful metaphor for this problematic interaction between designers and developers:
It’s like if you want to kiss a woman, or a man, do you actually want to feel their lips or do you want someone else to stand in the middle and do it for you?
Matteo believes designers must be intimate with their designs in order to achieve the level of precision that produces good design. Designers must be able to experience their website designs without any barriers. They need to constantly test the user experience, experiment with the animations and be able to play around with the responsive design. This experimentation is crucial and must happen while designing, not weeks later when the developers send back the code.
This intimacy is why Matteo argues that crafting websites should be done directly in the browser, by the designers themselves, without having to write a single line of code.
Intimacy + Perfectionism = Good Design.
The artistic culture at the Mucca agency is perfectionist. This devotion to every pixel is what differentiates the craftsmanship of professional designers from amateurs and what enables the creation of a rich human experience.
Designing directly in the browser eliminates all barriers and provides the intimacy and precision needed for the creation of good design.
Is Helvetica A Sign Of Bad Design?
As you can see in the video, Matteo was enraged by our choice of Helvetica. In defense of our branding, Webydo is made by designers — for designers.
We use Helvetica as part of the Webydo identity to signify our role as a facilitator for designers’ creativity. We provide the blank canvas in order to empower YOUR vision and infinite typeface choices!
Precision Tastes Better.
One thing we learned from the Mucca team is precision tastes better!
There’s nothing like a hot Pantone 19–1220 cappuccino to open our creative chakras…
Originally published on the Webydo Blog, November 11, 2015.
If you are interested in participating in Webydo’s series of Design Talks, email community@webydo.com.
