Responsive, bad, and other types of webdesign

This time we have seen some nice examples of web-designs done wrong.
What makes them wrong? Well, the contrast is too shallow, or the website tries to fill up the space with as much content as possible, or the design is over too attractive. The graphic won’t be bad if it would be images of the content, but many times the designers go nuts and try to show off too much and the content disappears within their designed junk. Some have crazy use of animations screaming “Hey I’m important”, and the other “Hey I’m important too” .. and the next “hey ….”.
But in reality there can be only one top most important thing, and the other might be also important but less than the first one.. The user has to know straight where the main interest is. User has to be able to see/guess knowingly or unknowingly  the level of the content importance from its layout.
I know it is hard to decide what has the top most importance but you better figure out your self. If you don’t, you convey the hesitation on the users shoulders. Users will be no less indecisive and they stay lost. They’ll choose something on random basis and might miss the point. If the design will be over too attractive they might end up staring at your graphic and overlook the content.

Once more, the website, its content has to be divided by its importance. There is no excuse to break this rule. Important things are bigger than others and are mostly on top of the page and represent the message straight.. not letting the user to think over too much.
Although we generally tend to show how smart we are and let users to figure out “what poet wanted to say” this approach is completely wrong.
Make it as understandable as possible. People do not have a time, they are naturally not patient enough and don’t wanna undergo your cat and mice tests.
Always use menu in common place with common structure. If they get lost – and they might be lost right away, they have to be able to find something stable, a start point where from they can start they discovery.. The menu!

In addition to that the web is everywhere, your, mine, everybody’s computer, phone, Iphone, I and other I or Android or even obscure Windblows device.. yes they still exists and we have to be aware and prepare the content even for them..
One solution to that might be so called responsive webdesign.. read some stuff about it on the Smashing magazine or else.

Here is a example of a responsive solution I have done – http://springforward.cz/.
The content thanks to its simple layout is easily transformable while it does not loose anything from its beauty.

responsive-webdesign

List of selected websites done wrong:

Remember SVG?
Yes the nice scalable vector format for you dandy animations..
Check this out.. http://snapsvg.io/

Once more again. the lovely example of interactive “something” that is soo full of possible alternative approaches. The Floex’s Candyski.

all dandy posts