Marketing

Websites are a visual medium, and need to look good when they do your selling for you. But the internet is a constantly changing space, and what looks good today will look old and stale tomorrow. With the incessant pushing of innovation – the constant developing of new standards for the web – future proofing a website is difficult.
So how do you keep ahead of (or at least in step with) the changes? Two ways:

1. Watch the big boys.
   Each major company in the software buissness has design guidelines. Apple, Google, Microsoft each have design guidelines. Pay attention to the most forward-pushing one of your choice.
   Which one do you pick? Make a judgment call. You can switch in a year or two when that design gets long in the tooth.
2. Push the boundaries yourself.
   Someone somewhere, outside of Google or Apple, came up with the initial “flat” look that both companies use. That graphics or web designer started a trend that, when it got big enough, was eventually co-opted by some of the largest companies in the world. That designer was ahead of the curve. They were a trend setter and pushed the entire internet a little bit forward.
   But watch out – for every trend setting awesomesauce there are designs that don’t work out over the long term. They solved the immediate problem that was presented to them and probably doesn’t work well for anything else.

Personally, I go with a combination of 1 and 2. Using Google and Apple’s guidelines as just that – guidelines – they are a starting point for great design. They can also serve as the course corrector when a design idea gets too far afield from the intended purpose.