Forum Moderators: phranque
First, we ought to define "ugly." I define it as "visually repulsive." To me, "pretty" or "ugly" is how a site will be described upon the first glance of a user, before they try to read the content, navigate the site, etc. In my opinion, content, accessibility, and the like don't belong in this discussion. Sure, they're technically more important than how the site looks, but they really don't have much (or anything) to do with whether a site is ugly or not.
So, say all of us Webmaster Worlders wanted to combine our efforts to make the ugliest website on the face of the earth. What techniques would we use? What would it look like?
(It should also be stated that this is obviously a highly subjective topic; most likely none of us will fully agree with anyone else and it's extremely likely that somebody will classify as "ugly" every technique that someone else really likes to use. So please don't take anything personally, okay? ;) )
Anyway, to lead off, I consider a site really ugly if it uses a dark background with dark text. I also consider mismatched colors to classify as ugly, as well as unstyled headings. Serif fonts are ugly on screen, as well as huge blocks of "loud" colors. And of course there are graphics, which could be ugly or attractive according to personal taste and are so diverse as to be scarcely worth mentioning here.
Anyone else?
Edit: This is discussion 6666
[edited by: drbrain at 10:03 pm (utc) on Sep. 20, 2004]
Blink text is annoying, but because it's annoying, itagain, draws the eye. If it weren't blinking, it might never be looked at.
But, from my own personal taste, I hate images for a background, like the tiled wallpaper effect. Ugg. I also hate dark backgrounds, but I have been going in circles with my husband b/c the site I am making for him, he really wants black backgrounds because HE likes them.
Other ugliness, things like espn, super cluttered, multi columns, css to the max but without the idea that simplicity is good, that's a fad I think will be as dated as frames or image based mouseover navigation are today.
it made me physically ill to look at
Here's the caveat, though, you remembered it. How many sites have you visted that you remember? That's why ugly can work.
No, I'm not speaking metaphorically, I mean it made me physically ill to look at it, I had to scroll down the page, find the webmaster contact information, I couldn't look at the content at all. I don't remember the site at all, I couldn't find what I needed, I emailed the webmaster about the problem, he was cool and promptly removed most of the blinking junk, then I was able to go back and find what I needed.
jkfjkf, that's the classic list of amateur designer mistakes, more fonts means it's better and so on. I used to work at a graphics place, I'd ask my boss what the number one sign of an amateur designer was, the list you gave was it, too many fonts being number one.
Fonts: ugly to me is sans-serif! Looks unfinished, I find it hard to read. Give me serifs every time.... I tend to believe this has to do with speed-reading and the fact that most books (at least the ones I read) are printed in serif fonts - so I have no doubt I'm totally singular here.
Otherwise, I have a hard time staying on a site with garish colors, any more than ONE animations/blinking/moving thing (a tiny ONE at that!), a mish-mash of graphic texts all over the place, anything with a black background, whether the text is light or dark.... and any site with flash anything gets less than 5 seconds of my time.
moving gifs is very high on my ugly list
Too many colors on a single page.
Some of the most popular sites have more color than you can imagine on any given page. It all depends on the skills of your designers.
Blinking graphics
As above, it really depends on the skills of the person who made that piece of graphic. Non-static images must look seamless and matches the overall design of the page. If you have a couple different images and make them into a gif, then it would look very 90s.
IMO, there isn't really a "standard" on how you can judge a site is ugly or not. Most fresh out of school designers think pretty graphics is everything. Experienced designers put more attention on functionalities and apply their graphics skills to enhance the overall experience of a website.
[webmasterworld.com...]
Bad ad placement ~ When you read an article and an AD is placed in the middle of it. This has the same effect when junk is placed in the opening area of a store. People like to be able to look around with room around them when they enter a store.
Too many COLs ~ Having to move eyes quickly over a site with little satisfaction is annoying.
Anything flashing to get my attention and my money.
I mean, if I went to a web designers site and thought it was ugly - I would rate the designer as a rank amateur. If I went to an 8 year old govt site, the ugliness/retro wouldn't bother me.
Therefore there is a case for deliberately 'ugly' design.
But I would think that most new sites want to be attractive rather than ugly. It's all a matter of perception, which reminds me that I really find the light blue colors on my WW "skin" to be ugly by now but I can't seem to get any new changes to take effect . . . ;)
A lot of stores are quite ugly, plenty of square boxes and blocks of text, and none of the curved shapes or assymetric edges that you get in nature. Part of the reason I find that so ugly is because I've become so used to seeing the same thing everywhere. Novelty is sometimes attractive.
But are there any kinds of ugly that will never work under any conditions?
When ugly crosses the borderline into spam. For example a site with a bunch of keywords and about 10 ads on a page. We all see them appear from time to time on the first pages of the SERPS.
This kind of ugly has no future. But ugly with good/great/unique content - that's a different story. It depends on your goals really.
Due to the way various email programs represent HTML formatted text, I have also had to use many FONT tags and absolute positioning techniques that I normally wouldn't use.
Also for intranet pages I was instructed to get rid of the normal site format and make it as simple as possible so the site is easier to use.
Thanks.
Oh. Wait a minute, where am I? ;)
Gaudy color schemes; hyper-bolded/italicised/enlarged/all-capped text, to the point where these emphases lose all meaning; flashing images; and blinking text are the biggest offenders. (I'm a person, not a crow.)
Those STUPID banner ads with 'shoot the evil hippopotamus" or 'punch the rabid bole weevil' or whatever, where your cursor turns into the little gun sight or boxing glove? Tacky and obnoxious and ugly.
Also, ugly is a horizontal scrollbar. Sorry, but it's true.
Here's the caveat, though, you remembered it. How many sites have you visted that you remember? That's why ugly can work.
Like the sites where you are on the page about widgets, and it lists:
red widgets
green widgets
blue widgets
you click on red widgets and the page lists
red widgets
red wodgets
red wudgets
you click on red wodgets and you end up at a page with
red wodgets
green wodgets
blue wodgets
and so on
it's spam, but for no purpose, because, try as you may, you can't even find an ad or something to buy, you just keep going in circles...
SN
I still remember a TV avertisement that had a really annoying song "Go to the one Stop Lighting Shop" as it had a little girl running around with a badly dubbed voice - it hasn't even been on TV for five years and I can still remember the name of the business.
Question: Did you ever go to the Stop Lighting Shop? Did you or anyone you know ever give them a single dollar?
Web site success is usually (please note the disclaimer implied here by the use of italics; obviously success isn't the same for every site)...anyway, web site success is usually defined by (a) visitors/click-throughs/etc, (b) sales, or (c) returning visitors (and, so, more clicks). An ugly site (in design or functionality) does not encourage any of these.
No site's content is SO vital and exclusive that poor design practices can be forgiven. Anything one person knows is also known by a hundred other people, all writing on the web, all equally informed, some of them also capable of making a site without--shock of shocks--ANY blinking, bolded, red, 24pt fonts. Go figure.
[edited by: createErrorMsg at 2:14 am (utc) on Sep. 23, 2004]
I can only remember one thing I haven't been able to find on the net in all my years here: an aftermarket print of Sue Coleman's "River Otter" (for which she wants $6k Canadian for her original and as much as I WANT it I can't go that much, but COULD go $500-$800 for an unframed print.... *sigh*) This is a VERY long story, beginning in about 1984....
