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The more you are of the moment, the quicker you are of the past

The more you are of the moment, the quicker you are of the past

#design

Published on Wednesday, 18 March 2015.
At 301 words, this article should take about 2 minutes to read.
This article is more than 8 years old.

Everyone who ever got that haircut in high school just wanted to be cool. Look back at photos of some of the decisions you made in the name of “fashion” and you’ll understand the title of this article. We’re talking about the downside of cutting-edge technology.

“That” haircut!

Bleeding-edge tech is cool!

As a self-confessed tech nerd, I get excited at the newest, shiniest development in… well, development. However inappropriate I really, really want to incorporate it into whatever project I’m currently working on. Refactoring an entire site to be Apple Watch compatible, scouring the web for the Next-Big-Thing in web design – parallax, salmon pink, enormous <video> backgrounds, working out if this blog is usable with Google Glass (probably not!). Seriously, I’ve tried to shoehorn all of these things into a single website. The thing is – sure, that site looks amazeballs… for about a week. Fingers crossed, it’ll be cool long enough for Awwwards to notice it but, ask yourself, honestly – hand-on-heart – does your client need all of this bumf?

It all ties back to the end goal of the site. It may be that the client wants a rapidly-dating, awwward-winning website and, hopefully, they’ll come back to you next month for the replacement because the trendiest color has changed and they want to “re-brand”. More often than not, though, a client wants to achieve something grander than that. Awards for being awesome are lovely but they’re not the be-all and end-all of your brand – just ask Leonardo DiCaprio!

Mind your fingers on the cutting edge

As with the bread-and-butter elements of design; typography, imagery, and layout, bleeding-edge techniques should be used when relevant and at no other time. You wouldn’t consider using this week’s font-du-jour without justification, so why fixed headers parallax backgrounds Material Design…?

Fin

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onward-journeys module