The Business of Design

Infographic by- Shanghai Web Designers

If you've seen my presentation on Social Media Marketing, you already know what's happening every 20 minutes on Facebook. Today, have a look at what's going on every 60 seconds on the web. Integrate that with real life and the more than 5,000 marketing messages consumers receive each day and you can understand why design disruption is the holy grail of the digital world.

In my homage to Steve Jobs, who the New York Times called a Designer first and a CEO second, lets look at some web design trends and how his genius has sparked them.

No Flash. Since Jobs banished it from the iPods, iPads and iPhones, HTML5 has replaced Flash as the simplest way to code interactivity and motion. According to Jobs: "Flash was created during the PC era -- for PCs and mice... the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards -- all areas where Flash falls short."

No Fold. Speaking of falling short, remember when important web content used to be placed above the fold- the imaginary bottom of your 19' computer screen, before you had to start scrolling down? Again, thanks to Jobs' tablets and mobile screens, single page sites and massive images are a better way to make impressions that disrupt.

Beyond Arial. If you've been following the accolades and anecdotes this week, you might have learned that Jobs took calligraphy class during his brief stint at college. As such, the Mac brought fonts to the masses. Thankfully we are moving away from the handful of fonts that web browsers support into more glorious, custom typography that adds style and grace to a digital brand effort.

Just as you can't move forward with an interactive strategy before having a business strategy, you need to capture attention to create buy-in. In today's fragmented digital world, that gets harder and harder to do. Kudos to Jobs who through zealous attention to the details in design,  put the emotional connection into interactive.

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” -- Steve Jobs