Web Design and the Glitterati

I’m sitting here checking out the websites featured here in their Links Pool, and these are supposed to be websites by some of the most prominent and promising web designers in the world, right? Anyway, I’m looking through some of these sites and finding a bunch of what I would consider “utter crap!” I mean, fine, yes, there are some wonderful neo-avante garde artist�s out there in the world trying to get some sort of message across, but what the fuck is this? Some of these sites don’t actually SAY or DO anything. They are nothing more than eyecandy, graffiti scrawls, microscopic navigation systems, pages with flash that never does actually load (this one site I’m on has absolutely nothing on it but a gray screen and the flashing word “loading” on it, and nothing seems to actually be loading). They call this “design?” Is this what the big-bucks designers call their “craft?” And what is this shit with the really crappy splash pages (some of which are NOT just the front page but bright pink splash pages buried within the site)?

Even sites for some rock musicians these days seem really strange… for example, you’ll get a main page, but the real site consists of endless popup windows… nothing is actually inside the main page nor can you actually navigate back to it (unless you count closing windows to be navigation?), the entire site consists of popups. I’ve also encountered a site (which shall remain nameless) which takes over your entire desktop obliterating your access to your taskbar and the only way to get it back is to close the window. DOH! That certainly wouldn’t make me want to hang around or come back on a return visit.

I’m also seeing pages with blatant misspellings, and I seriously doubt things were meant to be spelled wrong. These are people who are landing (or trying to land) web design jobs and are on like this Designers’ “A-List”… many of them have less than 3 years of experience, too. Some of these sites are extraordinarily complex, yet say absolutely nothing. Others are simplistic in the extreme to the point of utter blandness… gods, I am sooooo sick of the taupe color of PC’s being reflected on webpages, I could scream! Do these people not realize how boring to the eye that is? Are these the same people that thought of that color for our hardware? Ugh.

Heh. I just ran across a site that is still UNDER CONSTRUCTION… it says, “Come Back in the Spring.” Ummm… no, I don’t think I will. You see, these sites are in this list because they want to be reviewed and earn some sort of approval, or attract new clients. They should not be under construction if they are on this list. Continuing onwards…

Ok, that’s two sites in a row that wanted me to install foreign language packs to view their sites. Nuh-uh, not going to do that, my computer has enough trouble displaying English properly, much less Korean and Japanese, which I wouldn’t be able to read even if I had the language packs installed. Minus ten points to these folks.

*waitwaitwait* Flash is loading… and loading… ok, there it is, a whole page of text links. So, ummm… why was I waiting for Flash to load?

By now, you see the point in this blog entry. Good web design doesn’t necessarily come from the “A-List” web designers, a.k.a. The “Glitterati”… those that lecture the rest of us about site design, usability, navigation, content, and so on.

Utter LuSeRs!