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This really makes clear how boring web design has become. 99% of websites use the same standard layout, there's almost nothing distinct or exciting about any of
by karpour 1y ago
This really makes clear how boring web design has become. 99% of websites use the same standard layout, there's almost nothing distinct or exciting about any of the designs. I remember web design being an art form, with books being printed with the best designs... I'd visit brand websites just to look at the design itself, even if I wasn't interested in what they were selling.
Of course not all is bad, but I'd love to see some creativity again, it seems like almost no one dares to break the norm anymore.
- esseph 1y agoThere was some F1 website posted on here the other day and it was absolutely beautiful, but a bit quirky to use in practice. Ton of people complained, they hated it! That's why everything is fucking boring, because everybody tries to cater to the average.
- bookofjoe 1y agoI tried really hard to like that F1 website but just couldn't do it: terrible experience.
- verdverm 1y agoFrom the well aged book "Don't Make Me Think", people read the web differently than books. Almost always they are there to find information or get something accomplished, not for aesthetics or pleasure (though social media has likely skewed this since it's penning) This is why consistent UX beats out cleaver design (churn)
- esseph 1y agoBring back those crazy flash websites from the early 2000s
- appreciatorBus 1y agoPls no. Like if someone wants to do crazy stuff, that’s fine, do it as an art project, whatever. But IMO the only people who benefit when businesses and institutions are required to turn their websites into works of art, are artists. Everyone else is worse off.
- esseph 1y agoThere were some absolutely amazing ones in the style of old demoscene releases
- thrance 1y agoSee also, The Tyranny of the Marginal User: https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi...
- cheschire 1y agoI’m so happy I was not the only person to notice that. A bit quirky is exactly how I would have described it and once I accepted scrolling one direction would move the page wherever the designer wanted, I was fine. I guess we found all the kids at Ender’s battle school that couldn’t imagine the enemy’s gate as “down”.
- owlninja 1y agoI do wonder how HN specific this is? Every site that has a quirky design or attempts something new gets absolutely blasted by surly people. But then someone posts a funny GeoCities style bootstrap theme and everyone goes on about how they miss when sites had a quirky touch?
- Timwi 1y agoWhen I “blast” a website design, it's for practical reasons, not because I dislike the design. Since I mostly read HN on my phone, every website that is slow, laggy or unreadable on mobile just stands out negatively.
- electroly 1y agoI really think it's just simply about scrolljacking and not anything deeper. The GeoCities style sites have normal scrolling and the F1 site has hijacked (and very bizarre) scrolling. If your site hijacks the scrollbar then you will get complaints on HN. Keep it in mind and see how many HN complaints you read that are actually just about scrolljacking. I think readers here love quirky websites as long as it doesn't mess with scrolling.
- Tempest1981 1y agoThis, I assume: (vertical scrolling moves horizontally, then vertically, later diagonally) https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/43832710/how-f1-evolved-1950-where-headed-2026 https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/43832710/how-f1... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44816977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44816977
- LandR 1y agoLove that!
- codingdave 1y agoI like that we are stagnating. One of the things that took us away from the early content-focused days of the web is when every business had to get their brochures online, and every designer had to make their mark with how creative they could be. It vastly threw off the signal to noise ratio of web sites, and it delayed good UX for at least a decade because everyone re-invented menus and buttons on every web site. Don't get me wrong. I like creativity. I am an artist, even have a degree in Fine Arts. But there are times to innovate, and there are times to just make things work. Web UX needs to just work.
- shinycode 1y agoYeah 90% of websites are just informative … why would they need to be creative ?
- unlikelytomato 1y agothe same reason every building in the world is not the same identical concrete cube
- hnlmorg 1y agoThe vast majority of buildings do follow the same regional templates though. The reason they’re not specifically concrete cubes is more to do with the relative unpopularity of brutalist design than it is to do with the artistic flair of architects. In fact I’m sure most architects would love to stamp more of their creative personality into their work but they have to dial it back for cost and practicality reasons.
- modo_mario 1y agoHere in my area of Belgium it's become very popular to build modern cube buildings. Flat roof, featureless. No longer brick but a flat white, grey or black outside. i find it absolutely disgusting. We're really just reinventing brutalism but without much of the commendable outcrops like the barbican or whatever.