[thelist] high profile sites with strange mistakes

martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com
Tue Jan 23 15:13:31 CST 2001


Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

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Most bad design decisions made by big sites can be understood
if you visualise their agency... a big-ass design agency such as
<agency class="made up, honest">
CleaverClam
</agency>
where their 'designer' is sitting there, drinking his latte in front of
his G4, wearing 'funky' clothes, and thinking "I... am an ARTIST"

Which may be true, but it's not the approach to take with producing
a commercial site. Design has a *purpose* (usually to make the
designed object more profitable). Art doesn't necessarily.

>From experience, many (not all) designers in large design houses
(tends not to happen in small houses I've found) don't actually
care about how useful their design is; just how beautiful. Which
is why you get designs like http://www.viaduct.co.uk/ for commercial
clients.

If I'm your client, I will have useful. It will increase my ROI. It will
increase sales. Or I won't be your client any more.

I would think that Yahoo doesn't define a bgcolor for historical
reasons (ie it never has)

Cheers
Martin


(apologies to good designers who happen to drink latte in front
of their G4s while wearing funky clothes)






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Subject:  [thelist] high profile sites with strange mistakes




You are right--it would seem strange that a big site would make such an
error as using a tiny, tiling BG image. That is a bad practice, as most of
us seem to agree. But then, who can explain some of the decisions that are
made by web designers? Why doesn't Yahoo define a bgcolor? Who can say?



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