Creator's Block

The conversation of creativity vs. function is not a new one in the design world, but today as I was browsing medium I stumbled across an article on the subject that really ruffled my feathers (to put it lightly). Boris Müller, a Professor of Interaction Design at FH Potsdam, published a BOLD article that poses the question “Why Do All Websites Look the Same?” and even suggests that “The internet suffers from a lack of imagination”. Which, WOW… fatalist outlook much? Müller postures that the internet has become a desolate wasteland of boring design (okay maybe he didn’t say it quite so dramatically) based in part largely CMS and blogging platforms.  As a counter argument he highlights some examples of his students’ work that he thinks demonstrates truly “creative” design. I have a big issue with this. The designs he highlights completely disregard function and audience and seem to solely be driven by designing for the sake of design. Which, to me, is not web design. In our industry we MUST be aware of au