By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com
Centuries of conversation about art and beauty, a history of artistic craft dating back to prehistoric cave paintings, the entire artistic output of millions of souls expressing themselves in figure and form…and it all boils down this the high-water mark of artistic output.
That lousy site, and many others, can be found at Web Pages that Suck, a compendium of all that is bad in Internet design.
So what makes a bad website? Let's start with the great bugaboo of online design-the so-called "look-and-feel." Indeed, a website needs convey the thematic elements of the client's marketing approach-somehow embody in color and effect the nature and qualities of the company-but it must never be lost that a website is an *interface*. Overwrought, over-colored, constantly moving websites distract, annoy, and baffle the user. Sadly, Flash animation, one of the great innovations in web design, is sadly overused, or used simply because it *can* be used. As much as I love the use of Flash, the expression "click here to skip intro" has become one of my favorites.
Usability must be the key element in any design with simple, practical navigation that gives the user the clearest possible sense of what content is available and where he/she is going. Sometimes in an attempt to take design to the bleeding edge, simple practicality is overlooked entirely. It's not that I'm advocating an approach to design that entirely robs us of the designer's doubtlessly superb sense of the "aesthetic," nor am I hell-bound to ratchet down design considerations to the lowest common denominator with the utilitarian. But a website is an interface, and bad design obscures content.
And content, as they say, is King. King Content, however, is a fat fellow who grows fatter with each new addition (or blog entry!). Websites need to be carefully maintained like a nice formal hedge by winnowing away excess verbiage, by beating back the oppression of the grey page, and by carefully auditing and editing what goes up there in the first place. As they say, in web design it is always better to show than to tell.
Finally, the architecture of the site itself is the ultimate determinate of the site's quality and usability. Without first understanding and arranging the site's content, and without arranging the content properly and sensibly into the appropriate hierarchy or overall taxonomy, there cannot be appropriate navigation ... there cannot be a weighing or prioritization of what the site is intended to express. In short, an improperly architected site is chaotic, like an organically built house without blueprint or plan.
At Lux we work to suss out the needs of the user, to build an appropriate look(s) and feel(s) based on well-architected wireframes and content analysis. And sure, we can make it sexy, too - although, to this day, I'm not exactly sure why clients want this or what this means!
