IntuitiveDesigns

Here are two different articles with opposing concepts about what sells or not, bad design or good design. Both have some interesting points.

The first is entitled “The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites” by Mark Daoust. The premise of this first article is that ugly sells because people trust it more. They feel comfortable because it looks like there is one person or family behind the scenes instead of a large company. This is an interesting argument, but we wonder if the sites that it mentions as being ugly would do better or worse with a better design. The article does address the fact that functionality is something that is the most important of all in a web site and that is definitely something we agree with. A beautiful web site that’s hard to use does no good for anyone.

The second article is entitled “Hungy? Want another bullshit sandwich?” by Andy Rutledge. First of all, cheers to Andy for his bravery. We are sure that he really got grilled for this article, but his honesty is refreshing. The main premise of his article is that ugly sites are successful for being themselves, not for a good or bad design. That sites like Google and Amazon would be just as successful with bad design or not. Andy also did a re-design of Google that is worth checking out.

Both articles make good points, but we tend to agree with Andy on this. Badly designed and complicated web sites are hard to use and thus reduce sales when people get lost. It’s common sense. By doing a smart design for the web site by putting focus on important things and helping users navigate easier, you can increase your sales with certainty. In our opinion, it’s these things, not “beautiful” design that makes an effective web site although beauty certainly adds pleasure to the overall experience.

We found this article on the fadtastic site completely compelling. The author, Phil Renaud, did his own study comparing the use of different fonts on his essay papers in comparison to his scores. As a result, Georgia did far better than other fonts, assumed because it’s a serif font, but a little bit different than the typical font that everyone uses, Times New Roman. I would be interesting to see some serious studies done on this and the results, however, it does give a nice clue about how influential typography can be.

Article:
The Secret Lives of Fonts

We just came across this amusing, but somewhat cheeky article from Software is Too Expensive to Build Cheaply entitled If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers…. Some of the analogies are actually pretty close. One of the more amusing ones:

“Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.”

Worth having a look if you are a web designer for a chuckle.

In the web and graphic design industry, there is a huge misunderstanding about what we actually do. In general, the common misconception is that we just make things “pretty” and only do visual work. Beyond graphic is a wonderful site that fights against this common myth by proposing to take the word “graphic” out of graphic design.

So, what is a designer? A designer is a marketing and advertising professional, a planner, a strategist, a communicator, a high-skilled professional, and much more. Our only disappointment with this site is that they don’t actually suggest alternative titles to use instead of “graphic designer”. Maybe that’s for us to choose individually?

This must be the cutest article about the web development process we have seen. This process is about the same as we have here in our studio, but we’ve never seen an article so creatively illustrated for this. Great resource!