Is Creative Web Design Subjective?

Creative web design is like designing a building. It has a particular purpose, a specific route, and end destination you want the visitor to take and arrive at.

You want the experience to be positive, encouraging users to come back and visit again.

What considerations do you make? How do you guide someone through a series of rooms without handholding?

First off – structure; each room must have entryways and exits otherwise no one is getting anywhere.Next, information that gives the visitor reason to move on to the next and signage that tells them where to go. Every layer above that improves that journey – from the ease with which they can travel from one space, to the aesthetic appeal of each room – or webpage.

So, How Much of a Creative Web Design Build is Subjective?

Before anything else, we need to know the end goal. What you want to achieve will influence every decision you make, based on expected behaviour.

Much of this comes from data, trends and correlations that have historically achieved the desired goal. How have people reacted to this specific thing before? What has worked in the past?

This is objective web design decision-making. Working from a set of statistics and making changes based on impact rather than aesthetic. However, even considering both quantitative and qualitative data, the information we take into account is based on majority user journey.

This assumes inherent (often aesthetic!) knowledge, even down to an envelope icon for an email address, which is going to lessen objectivity to a degree.

Everyone makes unconscious assumptions drawing from their own experience, which we use to fill in the gaps of the why’s and the how’s. Even informed with data we often assume people will interpret the information given to them in the same way that we have, and so can never be truly, 100% objective.

With that being said, there are core principles to web design that are fairly universal.

There are choices that objectively help accessibility on a website, including high contrast colours, labels and legibility which are all standard practice online and offline.

Using those in conjunction with the subjective, aesthetic opinion of the creative web designer, and finding that balance between the two is what is going to create the best website possible in terms of user experience.

As with any visual medium, there is never going a unilateral consensus on what is “good” because personal preference is the largest factor. Something that seems intuitive to one person may not for the next. So really – how can it ever be objective?

Considering a Creative Web Design For Your Business?

Contact our team for a creative design refresh, or brand new website. A strong design will blend the subjective aesthetic with objective lead capture tools, helping to solidify your position in the digital landscape. You can keep up to date with our latest creative web design and marketing insights on our LinkedIn page.

Give us a call on 01329565001 or email us at hello@damteq.co.uk for more information on our creative web design services.