[thelist] Design/Development Goes Third World?

Ermm, why the hell not? OK, this is not the answer for every site, but 
places like Bangalore have made a *hell* of a lot of money over the last 
decade providing cheap programming resources to large companies in the US 
and rest of the world. Now, not everyone is going to turn to a "mass 
production" centre to produce their site. Many people want their designers 
closer to hand, but for large companies who are producing quite a few web 
concepts, such an arrangement makes perfect sense.

I looked through the references these companies have provided and while I 
have to say their design isn't to my taste, I can see exactly where they 
are headed - and their design isn't all that bad either. It looks a little 
"samey" perhaps, but it's not worse than work I see from a lot of companies 
located in the West.

Basically, I feel that Web production is not a "black art". Good design 
sense, the ability to create something unique - those are qualities worth 
paying for, but churning out websites (which is what a lot of people in the 
industry do if they are realistic about it), is becoming easier every day. 
Fortunately, many of the people on this list come from the truly creative 
side of the business - or are we fooling ourselves?? Having worked for web 
companies for nearly 6 years, I found in the end that my client's demands 
meant that I was often producing very generic sites. I felt frustrated at 
times and so did many of the designers I worked with. I saw Jeffrey Zeldman 
speak a while back and he commented on very much the same thing. I have now 
changed job and have complete responsibility for a single site. I'm looking 
forward to the challenge of being employed for my creative vision and to 
being able to develop this one site in interesting ways.

Of course, there's no reason at all why people from any country cannot 
enter the race. Creativity is not a Western phenomenon (I'm sure that 
wasn't the original posters' point. I'm not attacking - just exploring here 
:-) A Wired magazine article I read this month got me thinking about this 
point. If it is easier for Ad companies to buy web development skills than 
it is for a web company to get up to speed on brand and marketing 
techniques, then focus in our industry may well change dramatically in the 
future. It is easier to catch up with all the necessary skills in an 
industry than it is to develop those skills in the first place. It strikes 
me that the biggest problems places like Bangalore and Eastern Europe may 
have in competing with the West is image. If they are perceived as places 
where shoes are made, it will be much harder for them to attract the sort 
of clients who are interested in forging new paths. This is most probably 
why companies here have concentrated on mass production and provision of 
cheap services such as data entry and mass programming power.

Wow! That was a bit of a rant! It just got me thinking about what is it 
that we do that is so special? Thanks for sending in the links Erik, I 
think I needed to be aware of the existence of these companies. I will be 
watching this side of the market in future to see how it develops.


At 01:35 2000-05-26 -0500, you wrote:
>I've saved these three emails because I they struck me as odd ... but 
>since I've received three of them, I am wondering if we will eventually be 
>buying web sites made in the same countries that have made our shoes ...