Still on the subject of the dark side of the web: I found a contest for the ugliest website held last June. The winner, which turned out to be mytastynuts.com, won a free redesign package worth $1800. Now this could have been a little more buzzworthy if the contest and company site itself looked like there had been thought put into the design. Heck, if you ask me, the current mytastynuts.com looks better, and don’t really have the right to be doing redesigns.
Of course, there’s really no harm in entering a contest where a free redesign is up for grabs—even if it ends up being not much of an upgrade at all—but that’s the problem with web design: the threshold’s too easy to cross.
The ugliest website contest would also have gone viral if the site were designed in the ugliest manner possible. Something that looks like this (without looking like they’re ripping you off). But that’s the other problem with web design: not everybody “gets” good design.
Many have high tolerance for badly designed sites and bad design in general. Put bluntly, they wouldn’t know if something looks ugly even if it hit them in the face. Sometimes design can depend on a person’s instinct and taste, but it can also suck
Combine that with “it’s just a lowly website”, not something cooler like architecture, fashion, or an ad campaign, and it’s a steep, uphill battle.
And to top it all off, there’s the thin line between design and decoration, which is the absence of purpose and real content. A website, more than any other designed entity, is nothing without content and function.
Don’t be such a downer
Okay enough with the pessimism. How do we get rid of said problems? Eliminate ignorance, for starters. Buckets of inspiration from CSS galleries and image bookmarking sites are always good to have, but it’s also important to know exactly what we should avoid.
I recommend grabbing some eyedrops before clicking any of the links below:
Drawn.ca has posted 2 interesting sources of atypical imagery which, I realized, can be great design inspiration:
First, Dogfoose uses close-up images of produce in his illustrations. The sample below uses broccoli as treetops for a kids magazine illustration:
What an amusing way to channel the miniature look (achieved through tilt-shift photography) for infographics purposes! Is this is a subliminal technique to get children to eat their veggies? Or just a quirky case of nonsequitur?
It doesn’t matter if these questions get answered or not; what matters it that these questions were asked because of the design.
We’ve gotten so comfortable with tiled textures, but why not take an asymmetrical, unpredictable image as a cornerstone for your design concept?
Why not make trends like photographic backgrounds your own and experiment in unchartered waters? These unusual sources should be a good starting point.
Unmatched Style, which is one of the better CSS galleries out there, has posted its first video podcast discussing several notable websites featured in their showcase within 10 minutes. You can watch the episode below:
Let’s see what is happening here. The video podcast is a good solution to explaining why a certain website made it into the UMS gallery. Gene and Jay discuss what they like—and don’t like—about it as the site is being displayed, which seems more convenient than having to visit the site and then switch over to an article pointing out the nice design bits here and there.
I say seems because of course, actually visiting and interacting with the site trumps watching videos and viewing thumbnails any day.
Still, I think it’s a solid way to innovate and add value in this already saturated market of CSS galleries. This is almost the opposite of going niche, because what UMS has been doing is being more than just a trend-imitating, money-making gallery but a definitive resource. Something that isn’t just a CSS gallery anymore.
I think we need both, any, and all sources of inspiration, though. CSS galleries are usually just a collection of screencaps that become attractive depending on their content, but we need as much inspiration as we can get our hands on. Sometimes we’re looking for that specific site type; that’s where niche galleries come in. And then we need opinions from other people to help point out what we may have missed.
I’m looking forward to another ten minutes of UMS’s next video podcast, and curious as to how else one can improve the quality of these “inspirational” sites.
I’ve written about emerging gallery-style websites like image bookmarking and information design. Here’s yet another trend: niche web design inspiration galleries. Here are examples of those classifications:
Most of these sites aren’t really new, except that enterprising webmasters are coming up with new categories more often—seemingly every week!
Do we really need new sites for all these categories? I would say yes. Despite the presence of categories and tags, custom search engines powered by Google, gallery aggregators like Most Inspired, you can never have an excessive supply of inspiration.
Plus, visual search using mere keywords is still ineffective. Usually because there isn’t enough care given into describing images. You can never really tell how many tags you can add to properly describe the look and feel of a website.
In fact, since websites are basically interfaces and not just 2-dimensional designs slapped onscreen, showcases and galleries should also focus on their interactive elements. That’s probably where pattern galleries like Pattern Tap comes in.
Update (June 14, 2008): Victor says his project, vi.sualize.us, has been around longer than the sites I’ve mentioned here. So, again, this is another image bookmarking site worth checking out.
I smell a web trend. In the last few weeks I’ve discovered two new image bookmarking sites in addition to the insanely famous but still exclusive FFFFOUND!—We heart it and typeish.
To those who are asking “but why?”, normal bookmarking services aren’t visual in nature. Whether it’s social bookmarking like del.icio.us, or social voting like Digg, or serendipitous discovery like StumbleUpon, users decide if a website is worth visiting by looking at its name, description, tags, and popularity.
Granted, those sites are getting smarter by taking snapshots of what the sites look like, or by isolating thumbnails for if it’s an image or video being bookmarked. But it’s nice to have a dedicated tool that satiates your hunger for all things eye candy. The question is, are these image bookmarking sites effective?
Jeffrey Zeldman’s article, The vanishing personal site, brings to light what many of us have been wondering about in the back of our heads for a while now. Social networks that provide features often found in a personal website captured our fancies and stretched our virtual personas in all directions. That goes for both the knowledgeable and not so knowledgeable in web development.
The Question
It’s not really a bad thing, which Zeldman also stresses. The question is, now that you’ve scattered yourself all over the place, how are you going to put yourself back together?
Not that you need to; I’m sure not everyone would be interested in painstakingly picking up the pieces one by one and gluing them together. That’s why FriendFeed became an instant hit. But if you ask me, using another social network to put them all together does not feel good. Not one bit. I’d consider it another convenient (even organic) way to spread my own content. But that’s it. I still dream of the day I manage to tastefully put my stuff together in one place. Like these websites:
I just published a post on Devlounge, titled Break Your Design Mold. It’s about designers being too stuck in that familiar rot, walking paved roads of easy solutions that work, rather than trying the path in the forest of tough decisions on the edge of things.
Enough with the analogies, go read the post. It could just as well be a Wisdump update, so you’ll just have to do.
Now if you excuse me, I’ll have to go continue breaking that mold of mine…
