Timeless design

If you’re into design, any kind of design, you probably heard about ”timeless design”. Timeless is defined as something that’s “not affected by the passage of time or changes in fashion” and so timeless design is, by definition, a piece of design that’s not affected by the passage of time. Something that’s equally beautiful and functional now as it was 50 or 100 or a 1000 years ago.

What about the web then?

The web is a very young medium. We’re talking less than 30 years which in the grand scheme of things is nothing. Is there such a thing as a “timeless website”? I was thinking about this a few days ago while I was scrolling through my gallery. I was looking at the first websites I posted just a few years ago and most of them (a good 85% I’d say) have been redesigned or are gone completely.

Ironically, compared to a chair or a lamp or a desk, a website is a much more fragile object. There are a lot of components that can change and evolve with time and websites depend on those components. Unless you build a very simple website, you can’t realistically expect to leave it there and come back a decade later to find it still in perfect shape.

We rely on CDNs and 3rd party services and we expect them to work, well, forever. And that’s a bit silly if you stop and think about it. This website you’re looking at right now, will stop working in less than a month if I stop paying for the hosting . Same is true for the domain.

Anyway, I’ll stop rambling now, but if you have opinions on what’s a timeless website let me know. Always interested to know what you think.