The design process: forgotten message

Websites... mmm.

Hi there, fellow designer. I have few words of terribly stupid, but awfully clean and clear wisdom for you. I've recently found out that I have a lot of thoughts on design. Much more then I have to say on every other topic, with exception for stupid science fiction, maybe. So let's prove blog's title proud spirit and settle down one design problem at last.

Drilling horizontal stabilizers: operating a hand drill, this woman worker at Vultee-Nashville is shown working on the horizontal stabilizer for a Vultee "Vengeance" dive bomber, Tennessee. The "Vengeance" (A-31) was originally designed for the French. It was later adopted by the R.A.F. and still later by the U.S. Army Air Forces. It is a single-engine, low-wing plane, carrying a crew of two men and having six machine guns of varying calibers

Today's design agenda is all about setting user's attention on something important. While most of our undereducated clients call for more color, larger fonts and more font variants we are just smiling at them, ignoring their needs and fighting for our passions, cleaning up pixels and adding gloss to icons and buttons. It's a pity, but we are terribly wrong, both of us, I mean. Everybody pursues his or hers personal aims and we are finally reaching them forgetting about the site itself. When talking about site, I talk about final product, machine, which draws user attention to client's goods and services and converts this attention into beautiful flow of money.

The situation

Do we often get this machine after all? Not really, looking back at the bright colored Internet sites with no clear messages. They don't even get close to communication with client in most cases.
So let's find out what a client always want the designer to do with his site.

1. To make site similar to the one of his most successful competitor's site. But with some deviations. From time to time these deviations may be based on real differences between client's and his competitors businesses or on some sort of marketing myths. 
2. Add more cool clipart and stock photos. It will immediately improve site's look and feel, add some personality and of course fill in all this awfully empty space.
3. Add some browser specific, bandwidth consuming or flash related stuff to achieve some modern look in dull design. Like video on site's background. And music on background. And hello message in new window to greet dear guests. Let us never forget of entirely flash based websites. Clients still want them.

Let's now look at designers passions, which are common, by the way.

1. Site have to look great in portfolio.
2. Site should be created with as less time consumed as it can be. No matter the cost - clipart, vector stock, free icons. All measures are allowed.
3. Client should stick to designer's services. So designer produces design too complicated to be adequate to it's purposes. Some exotic banner formats, logotype, which can't be printed without complete reassembly.

And the missing solution

While reaching our goals in design process we always leave behind the site itself. It offers no communication through interactivity, but form elements are freaky and shine like a supernova. Just like they should look in portfolio ) Site offers nothing. The message is hidden behind all those things, invented by client and implemented by designer just to underline that message. Make it bold. And after all, if message is still there, it is absolutely unclear. Finally, we add some flash and about a half of our clients are left behind, they don't have plugin. At last this clone beast, we still call a site, is finished. And everybody clap their hands, like it's not a funeral )