Nice article from http://www.3point7designs.com/blog/tag/galleries
Everyone thinks they know what looks good, but in reality they only know what looks good to them. While there are general rules to design (such as balance, contrast, etc, etc) for the most part people simply have a preference as to what looks best.
For Example: You might be inclined to like lots of white space, and love a clean yet elegant design. Someone else however - will think the same site looks basic, boring, and overly simple.
My suggestion is to focus less on VISUAL design, and more on USABLE and CONTENT focused design. While harder to sell, ultimately no one is going to go to a website to see what the design is… they are going to perform a task, or to access the content. While a good design might be more memorable, even some of the most popular websites have lack-luster designs (myspace is the classic example).
September 7th, 2007 at 1:49 am
Is this by any chance the website?
http://www.3point7designs.com/blog/tag/galleries/
September 7th, 2007 at 9:54 am
@Lash: Yeah it’s this website!
September 7th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
i like basic and boring IF 1) the content is ok! 2) design still reflects user personality.
myspace? hmm, nah, content and design suck! users tend to overload their pages with way too many glitters, imgs and widgets! this eats up my bandwidth and makes the pages way too slow to load. so, i definitely stay away from myspace. thinking about it, this also applies to most online social networks, i.e. hi5, facebook, friendster, kotzot…there are blog-users who tend to do the same! pfff, hopeless! most of them widgets/ glitters serve no real purpose!
September 8th, 2007 at 5:15 am
hey! that is sooo true.