For me, biggest tell-tale of a new designer is overuse of design elements and frills. Adding gradients, shadows, faux 3D, outlines, images, etc. should not be done without a good reason, and sparingly.
Your user’s attention is limited. Plan for this. Visually emphasize only the most important thing(s) on the page — 2 or 3, maximum. This often means not using many saturated colors (ever notice how much there is grey in OS X? It stays out of the way. I find Aero Glass unbearably distracting at times.)
You don’t have to make your content (as opposed to nav) hyperlinks use a color from your branding palette. In fact, don’t, as rule of thumb. Make them a decent blue (not super saturated like #0000FF), and do vary them for :visited.
If it sounds like I am saying “don’t have fun,” I apologize; I tend to be overly minimalist. Do the fun stuff, just use them as demos, not in production (music band sites excepted).
Comments
Agreed. Allow me to add a few “avoids:”
For me, biggest tell-tale of a new designer is overuse of design elements and frills. Adding gradients, shadows, faux 3D, outlines, images, etc. should not be done without a good reason, and sparingly.
Your user’s attention is limited. Plan for this. Visually emphasize only the most important thing(s) on the page — 2 or 3, maximum. This often means not using many saturated colors (ever notice how much there is grey in OS X? It stays out of the way. I find Aero Glass unbearably distracting at times.)
You don’t have to make your content (as opposed to nav) hyperlinks use a color from your branding palette. In fact, don’t, as rule of thumb. Make them a decent blue (not super saturated like #0000FF), and do vary them for :visited.
If it sounds like I am saying “don’t have fun,” I apologize; I tend to be overly minimalist. Do the fun stuff, just use them as demos, not in production (music band sites excepted).