Web Pages That Suck - learn good web design by looking at bad web design

I’ve often said that if you have a web site and aren’t reading Seth Godin’s blog, you don’t really belong on the web. Seriously. The man is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. The only thing that keeps him from ascending to the heaven’s is that stupid, unmarked home page bar across the top of his blog. On the other hand, I mentioned that he really should find a way to use the picture of his head and he came up with a, naturally, brilliant concept.

In today’s post, Mr. Godin sums up why you should care about bad web design.

Every time you visit a new website, enter a new airport, visit a new store, examine a new book… the question you ask first off is, “what’s this like?”

At a strange airport, if it’s ‘like’ your airport, you know just what to do. It’s easy. If it’s totally different, you have to stop, regroup, and start to understand what’s involved.

… Visit a website with a brown on brown color scheme, a stock photo of a nautilus, some flashing graphics, a bunch of widgets and a typeface that’s not quite right, and you’ve already decided how you feel. Entirely based on the fact that this site is like those sites, and you didn’t like those sites.

He gets it. You got it? Get reading his blog.