Why Are Web Pages So Ugly?
Monday February 8, 2010
I was thinking about the Reader's Choice Awards and specifically the Best Web Designs participants when one of my friends was complaining that some of the nominees were (in his words) "downright ugly". He wondered why, when there were so many good looking sites on the Web, ugly ones seem to get more prominence. So I asked him who he nominated for each of my design categories. And he laughed and said "well, I couldn't think of any for all of them." And I began to wonder, are beautiful Web pages more or less common on the Web than their ugly brethren? So I devised this completely unscientific test. I went to a random word generator and had it generate 10 words for me. I then went to Google and input those words one at a time into the search engine. I clicked "I'm feeling lucky" to get the first result for that search term. I decided ahead of time that if I got any About.com sites (I didn't, by the way), I would get a new word - as no matter what I think about About.com sites beauty or lack thereof, my opinion is biased because I work for them. I also decided to only accept one page from any given site, so if a site came up for more than one word, I went back to the word generator and asked for another (this happened three times). Once I had my 10 sites I evaluated them based on principles of design and my own aesthetic. The results are as you see them in my article Why Are Web Pages So Ugly? As you might guess, none of the pages were something I would really consider good looking, although a couple were okay. Most were downright ugly, and one was almost frighteningly ugly.
Ugly (as well as beauty) is in the eye of the beholder. And I strongly suspect that males perceive website beauty differently than females. Several of the sites you noted as ugly I found acceptable, not ugly. The layout of this site is okay, but I just don’t like the beige background. I personally don’t think of myself as being creative and probably rely too much on templates, or try to recreate other sites I find attractive, just to avoid my own “Uglies.” I think this is an important discussion, but not one everyone will agree on.
Jennifer,
I would have to agree, the list you put together has quite a few ugly websites, although a couple on there I think could just use a couple tweaks and could be decent looking sites.
It seems like web design experts call ugly websites pretty and pretty ones ugly (or badly designed, etc.) I liked that flash Phone one. But most of the ones that were “okay” looked boring.
I guess that’s just me. I’m very into aesthetics.
While it’s true that aesthetics tend to be in the eye of the beholder, I was trying very hard to judge these sites based on well established rules of design. And most of the sites broken most if not all of the rules. It’s fine to break the rules if you know what they are in the first place, but I would argue that most Web designers have never learned any design rules. They just go out there and throw stuff on a page. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
It’s true that some of the pages I found could be made better with just a few tweaks. But that doesn’t mean that they weren’t ugly now. Perhaps the designers should make the tweaks before they launch the pages, rather than waiting for someone to pull the scales from their eyes and tell them, “hey, that’s ugly.”
I think it’s worth mentioning that styles on the web have changed a great deal over the last ten years. However, the designers who were working ten years ago are still around working.
While they may have changed their style some to reflect more contemporary methods they are still greatly influenced by how they learned to design in the first place. Just look at the number of sites you see out there where the designer has incorporated CSS, but only to style their rows and columns they are still using.
A second point is to remember that there is always a customer (site owner) involved. Many designers begin the process by asking the customer if there are any sites they like… and then end up handing over a copy. Many non-web savy people like these clients are also influenced by more traditional media that are are more comfortable with, usually print media.
At the end of the day, you can submit mockups using all kinds of contemporary design ideas but the customer gets the final nod… and my condolences if you run into the dreaded customer who values the opinions of their 8 family members and friends who ‘have a good grip of design’
Jennifer,
I read everything you write but when it comes to the ugly websites? It seems that the sites you have chosen by your test may not have been the best of choice, as only one website gain you said “I like it” what is beautiful? would you say this site is ugly? http://coastalanglermagazine.net and what about sites from the webby awards?
@Karl: when I “chose” the sites for this article, I was choosing them at random. The idea was to find sites randomly and see if they used good design principles and were aesthetically pleasing. So I didn’t choose the sites, specifically. As for what is beautiful, well of course that depends upon the person. But there are Principles of Design – http://webdesign.about.com/od/webdesignbasics/a/aa053007.htm that have been written about for hundreds of years. And good looking Web designs will use those principles just as much as any other designed thing.