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Effective Uses of Ineffective Designs

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Effective Uses of Ineffective Design The modern world has grown increasingly interconnected with the advent of the internet, and the way that audiences consume media has changed as a result. Digital media has grown to value things like high contrast, clear images, and organizational patterns of grids and lines, as the tenants of design. Modern website design has grown increasingly standardized over the years, and while that does result in a lot of very nice looking new websites, it also means that making your own site stand out is growing increasingly difficult. Take a look at these three home pages, each from an award winning website.

These sites certainly look different, and you can sort of tell what their purpose is, but they're very minimalist, and very bare bones. They don't grab your attention, and unless the user decides to investigate further, they're given very little information about the sites in question, or the companies they represent. There's also nothing about these sites that would draw you in, they're relying on a pre-existing interest in their content to keep you interested. Now, for established brands, that technique is fine, but for products and services that are still trying to drum up business, a website needs something more.

In an effort to be different, and therefore memorable, many sites have started breaking those standard design rules. If you're trying to generate an online buzz, you need more than just a pretty website, you need something memorable. It's the same idea that led to perfectly nice looking commercials ending in snappy jingles that you will remember for all eternity, only now the way to being memorable is a lot more hit and miss than just setting your phone number to music. Breaking away from the crowd certainly makes you website unique, but when it comes to design principals, there's generally a reason that everyone is doing the same thing. So which rules of design can be broken, which rules cannot, and how do you balance your website to respect both groups? It's an important question, because taking your divergence too far can sink your website for being unusable, while not going far enough means risking being forgotten completely.

It's a tricky line to walk, but there are several websites that have successfully built their brands on bad webdesign, so it is possible. Examples include the Captain Marvel film's official website, the Yale University School of Art's official website, and the website of LINGsCARS UK. These three websites are very different, and they all look fairly awful, but they're also very well known and the businesses they represent are very successful. So how do they do it? How does neon rainbow text, a paisley background, or free reign to edit your site help make a website more popular? Each of these pages will be looked at individually, but the big reason is that they're memorable. Their design choices, while unconventional, help the sites to stand out, and are generally amusing to visit, so they stick in your mind. Traditional web design may look good, but it isn't going to stand out when lined up with the hundreds of other websites that are doing the exact same thing.
What are the principals of design?
1) The Basics of Web Design
2) Award Worthy Examples of Good Web Design
3) Elements of Design
What sites break these rules effectively?
1) Captain Marvel Official Website
2) LINGsCARS.com
3) Yale School of Art
Why are these sites effective?
1) Benign Violation Theory
2) Usability and Accessibility
3) Striking a Balance
Award Worthy Examples of Good Web Design
Crypton
This site is minimalism at it's finest, with nothing but text and one little emoticon for style. This homepage sets the tone for the rest of the site though, as it's based entirely on a bot meant to help users understand crypto currency. The lack of images may be surprising to some users, but there really aren't any images that would have been effective for this particular site. Crypton isn't selling anything, and since it's all about digital currency there aren't many physical example to show. The site introduces itself with nothing extra added, and it presents itself in a clean, professional manner. There's nothing eye catching about this site, but then, if someone is visiting the site, they're probably already interested in crypto currency. It's not exactly something you just stumble upon, unless of course you're looking at website design.

Mikiya
This site is also clearly influenced by minimalism, but it's meant to sell things, so it's homepage switches between several different images of furniture, most very similar in composition to the one seen above. The site gets a bit more intricate once the user moves into the actual products that are up for sale, but this page does a fairly good job of introducing users to the general style of Mikiya's furniture designs.

ETQ
ETQ, if you couldn't guess, is an online shoe store, and while you may be wondering if the white, black, and gray sneakers are a good representation of their catalog, let me assure you, they are. Nearly all the shoes I saw for sale are sneakers, and very few of them appeared to come in other colors. The site's homepage sets the tone for the rest of site, which is also in grey scale, and which follows a very minimalist grid layout that is pretty much all pictures.