So, have we managed to pull ourselves out of the primordial soup of digital design evolution? Certainly, there has been a great deal of flopping about on the beach and a few invigorating first breaths of fresh air - but does digital design even have legs yet?
Traditional design media has never completely adapted to the natural human exploration process, involving the question: "What happens when I do this?"
Hannah Williams, digital designer, Strawberri
Just as the invention of the printing press and other technological innovations revolutionised human communications and design, so has the advent of digital media. The interactivity it can provide has become more than simply a digital equivalent to turning pages.
This, combined with the ease of reproduction, the ability to incorporate a variety of media, the capacity to reach a wide audience and to provide this audience with the facility to communicate amongst itself, makes the digital domain a powerful communications medium. And that`s what digital design is all about - communication.
Within the digital domain it is now possible for design to be more than just static images. Design is something that can react directly to human engagement, intelligently involving users rather than simply throwing static messages at them and hoping for the best.
So how does all of this influence the way in which designs are constructed? Traditionally designs are originally created as flat, static entities and then applied to different mediums. By doing this, one is carrying all of the restrictive baggage of traditional media through to digital media where these restrictions do not actually exist.
Corporate identities, cultural icons and graphic representations need no longer be defined by a single motionless state, but can exist as dynamic, interactive entities. A design that successfully incorporates the elements of both movement and interactivity can take those few extra steps towards provoking a dynamic virtual dialogue with the audience.
But why would one wish to engage an audience in a dialogue? Surely conventional, one-way, monolithic communications get the job done? There is one aspect of digital media that cannot be ignored in this regard, and that is choice. The audience may now choose which communications they wish to expose themselves to, and adapting to this as designers requires a paradigm shift. If someone is uncomfortable with the six pop-up windows that appear as they enter a site, they can close them - and the site as well - and go elsewhere.
You see, natural human communication and interaction with the physical world takes place in a bi-directional manner - action and reaction. You speak to someone and they react, you throw a fragile object and it breaks, and so forth. Traditional design media has never completely adapted to the natural human exploration process, involving the question: "What happens when I do this?"
If design can facilitate exploration, communication and learning in a more natural manner, it will allow all of the aforementioned to be achieved more effectively and less intrusively. Interactivity, from a user`s point of view, can be a self-affirming process. The fact that something reacts to your actions acknowledges your existence and importance within an environment. Therefore, interactivity can contribute to combating the alienating effect of today`s commercial design and mass marketing and bring the user back into the communications loop.
As the focus and application of digital design broadens, so does its value. For example, a large percentage of Internet users surf the Net for entertainment, it provides an alternative to the mundane isolation of watching television because of the interactivity (both with the medium and other Net denizens) as well as the freedom of choice (with regards to the content they can engage in) it provides.
As technology progresses, we have the tools at our disposal to engage audiences in ever more exiting ways. Bandwidth restrictions are progressively being addressed through better compression and information-transfer technology and it is fast becoming a question of whether commercial design can afford not to engage audiences in one way or another.
So where is digital design going? For design to fully utilise the potential of digital media the design process has to be undertaken with movement, user engagement, interaction and communication in mind. The ultimate application of a corporate identity for example, will no longer be on a foiled, embossed flat business card, but as an intelligent offer of exploration and engagement.
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