| Actually I don't think most programmers are capable of designing something like spacex.com - every image on the site fits the minimalist theme (and there are hundreds). The photos are always dark in the appropriate areas so the text is readable, and they're dynamically cropped/resized with good positioning for all breakpoints. - the front page appears to be simple, but if you click through the site there are actually a ton of dynamic illustrations and charts like this: https://www.spacex.com/human-spaceflight/ The key thing is that the aesthetic is executed consistently and with restraint. This video is a bit old now but it's as true now as it's ever been: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k Minimalism is the most difficult aesthetic to pull off, because it's easy for the end result to look unfinished, cheap or lazy. I think the problem is not that coders can't be designers, but that coders generally don't really care about design, and I say that as a coder. If you gave the spacex project to the average coder, you'll probably end up with something like sap.com or fortinet.com Web design has converged a lot in the last 20 years because people don't want to learn a new UI for every website they visit. This makes good web design harder, because now if you want to create something memorable and distinctive, you'll need to do it in spite of the navigation and functional parts looking identical to every other site. |
Every point you mentioned is trivial to meet imo.