Even to the layperson, contemporary design has evolved far beyond the "modernism" of clean right angles and overly-complex technicality... but it has retained one factor and made it the pillar of modern design principle: cleanliness.

Dishwashers don't looks like dishwashers anymore; they look like attractively designed piece of furniture from the USS Enterprise^TM. Telephones look like they should mold to the individual's head. Heck, some of them do. Everything from appliances to transportation to cans of cooking spray are being revolutionized into more efficient and more attractive items thanks to designers around the world. Apple^TM even went so far as to make design the primary selling point on the iMac^TM, so much so that the only thing it has to offer other than the trademark "quack" error sound is its transparent gel packaging.

Intangible technologies are no different. Software from operating systems to plug-ins are being redeveloped to impress the eye as well as the savvy user's mind. Websites are at the forefront of that sensory-overload movement, as well they should be. The number one internet technology has always been, as far back historically as ARPAnet, Email, but that statistic may be endangered sooner than we think. "Everyone who's anyone" has a website these days. From major conglomerates like CBS^TM and ZDNet^TM to the local garbage disposal repairman, just about every company, firm, organization, school, entity, and individual has a hand or six in the internet realm.

My first venture was almost wholly internet-based. We bought into the idea that the "World Wide Web" was going to end up being a pretty big deal, and got in on the ground floor. Well, as close to the ground floor as young teenagers could get, at least. With AOL^TM version 2.5 and a great deal of passion, a few friends and I leapt into cyberspace with United Concept Studios in '93, and boom, seven years later here I am, still riding the wave of cybersurf. How does one stay ahead these days?

Look at washing machines more closely.

Push this button and the machine goes on. Push this button and the machine goes off. Label the buttons "on" and "off" and voila, the machine is controllable by a six year old with the IQ of a lemur. However, make the buttons an integral part of a sleek and stylish flat-screen panel, expose and polish up a few choice functional parts, and give the machine a charcoal gray exterior with textured cobalt blue hand-contact-points, and you've expanded your audience. The six year old can still run the machine, but the twenty-six year old dual-income-no-kids-and-a-dog couple will WANT to run the machine, and the forty-four year old executive will HAVE to run the machine because his savvy buddies at the office have one too.

Web design has to bridge the eternal gap between function and form. One cannot follow the other; they must coexist, and in fact foster each other. Nobody's perfect, and one navigation system will not satisfy all audiences. The concept, however, remains true: internet design needs to and is beginning to clean up its act.

Chunky framesets, autostart MIDI files, seventy-frame GIF animations, and big standardized gray link buttons are more dead than integral serialism. Professional web designers these days realize that people who are "plugged in" to the web - people that see the internet as a "legitimate" resource - are impressed by image and content together, like the charcoal gray washing machine. Simple to use, but savvy and intelligent. Full of content, but efficient and sleek. Attractive and appealing, but tasteful and not ostentatious. Just visual flair isn't enough; the website has to have substance, or else it's just empty-calorie eye candy... but when the savvy and creative designer organizes hardcore and substantive resource material in an efficient, attractive system that transports the end user from the keyboard into the created cyberenvironment, then true "web surfing" takes place 21^st century style.

The new Tri-Luminary website design incorporates the concept of integrating design and content in an efficient, dramatic, and impressive manner. Javascript mouseovers give instant descriptions of the links before the user gets lost in a melee of URL's. Multilayered graphics give both efficient information displays and imrpessive graphic references in a miniscule download. The TLI site also uses one of my primary design techniques: borderless table layouts. Tables are a designer's best friend. Though never originally conceived to contain anything other than alphanumerical ASCII, tables have all but replaced frames as a way of laying out more information and better graphics content in a smaller, more efficient HTML code document. My 1998-99 revolutionizing of the Eclectica website gave way to new advents in coding skill, and I've been able to give TLI a bright, fresh new look that better reflects who we are and what we do.

As internet software technology continues to evolve, and we see newer and more powerful generations of browsers emerge, and as Java gets a caffiene boost so big we start using "JoltScript," the tools at our hands as designers will become wild beyond our dreams. It's the academic part of the job to keep up on what's new and what's hot, both in the toolbox and in the peanut gallery. Today's charcoal-and-cobalt spin cycle may be tomorrow's orange-and-brown Nehru jacket.

Keith David Reeves is Tri-Luminary's webmaster and leading audiovisual designer. The opinions and statements made here do not necessarily reflect those of Tri-Luminary, Inc. or its affiliates.