4 ms·
These designs all have one thing in common: they look amazingly beautiful at first glance, and if you had to use them every day, they would drive you absolutely
by seldo 17y ago
These designs all have one thing in common: they look amazingly beautiful at first glance, and if you had to use them every day, they would drive you absolutely crazy.
The difference is between something designed to impress (like, say, a ceremonial sword) and something that actually does its job efficiently, every day (like a kitchen knife). The biggest, most popular, most used sites in the world all have really simple, get-out-of-the-way designs: Google's UI is almost not there, Facebook's gets simpler with every redesign, Flickr's tries hard to disappear completely.
Now, there are some objects, very rare, that are both beautiful and used every day -- the kitchen knife that's also pretty. I'd put Flickr's UI in this category. But the majority of heavy-traffic designs are ugly but functional: think Craigslist, Amazon, and our own Hacker News.
So no disrespect to these designs: they're amazing. But sheer visual impact is not the only metric for judging web design.
- jamesbritt 17y ago"These designs all have one thing in common: " They look like print magazine spreads. Which goes hand-in-hand with your observations on their bright-but-short impact.
- baddox 17y agoYou're right. But those types of designs are still appropriate for certain websites. Namely, websites for companies that are mostly static. The elaborate designs serve to catch the eye and reinforce an opinion of that corporation. Granted, some of the designs claim to be blogs, in which case the designs almost surely hurt usability. Most of them are either web design portfolios or corporate homepages for non-electronic or -technology companies. I would consider those designs appropriate.