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Web Design-isms: 7 Surefire Styles that Work

thinkvitamin.com — Glossy buttons, ornamental backgrounds, futuristic interfaces. We ’ve all been guilty at one time or another of committing the 7 design-isms in this article from Larissa Meek. But that’s okay, she tells us, they’re classics for a reason.

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  • kevinfell, on 10/11/2007, -8/+1Is the author really Larissa Meek, or is it just a nom-de-plume?
    http://thinkvitamin.com/advisors/Larissa_Meek.php
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larissa_Meek
  • adidax, on 10/11/2007, -2/+33It only mentions rounded corners once, this cannot be a good design guide.

    /sarcasm
    • BoneheadFarker, on 10/11/2007, -6/+26Bah...I buried it for lack of flashing text and contrasting colours. Blue text on red FTW!


      /before I get buried, that was a Geocities joke...
    • gnalakalaciath5, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6Finally, some people that understand true style.
      I've personally been really attached to the and tags lately. Maybe we should start a site (we could develop it together!) for real designers.
  • Omar12, on 10/11/2007, -3/+3Good article. Makes a lot of sense of where to look for inspiration when you are designing a website.
  • zzz@tkz, on 10/11/2007, -3/+3Duggmirror didn't cache it, and it is down as of now.
    • xerus, on 10/11/2007, -2/+15I heard that they're replacing duggmirror with Dr. Phil.
  • mutez0r, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2Already down?
  • JimmyTheClam, on 10/11/2007, -8/+15Her website is already CHUNKED after only 70 something Diggs?
    Yep, that's an accomplished web designer alright.

    So, what's that trick she does with her tongue?
    • zzz@tkz, on 10/11/2007, -0/+14It's not really the web designer, it's the server. Granted a person could limit the load on the server by using little to no images (looks way better anyways), but even then it wouldn't be the web designer too much, it'd person paying the bill.
    • HunterTV, on 10/11/2007, -2/+31http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/8243/diggxz0.jpg
    • hipnerd, on 10/11/2007, -1/+28It's just not realistic for someone with a site that gets a very modest amount of traffic to pay for a Digg-proof hosting plan on the off chance that they get slammed with a tidal wave of visitors for a few days once a year,

      These people aren't cheap. They're (generally) not bad designers.They just are casualties of their own success. It really can't be helped, and the constant bitching about it doesn't accomplish anything.
    • JimmyTheClam, on 10/11/2007, -4/+2I wasn't saying that just to be a dick, but part of good design is availability, and not just pretty pictures.
      And Digg-proofing (hardening?) a site isn't that difficult or very expensive either.
    • noahhoward, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10That's not her site.
    • smackhero, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6first off, she's a web _designer_, not a web developer.

      secondly, as others have mentioned, that's not her site. she just wrote the article.

      last of all, this is likely a logistical problem, and has nothing to do with the way the site was designed. bandwidth and server hardware limits will always impose a problem regardless of how well a site is developed, which has nothing to do with design either.
  • kevinold, on 10/11/2007, -6/+3Congrats to Rikcat (http://www.rikcat.com) for minimalism!!!
  • Higgins, on 10/11/2007, -0/+247 Surefire Ways to Get Your Webserver Hosed.

    1) Get Dugg
    • noahhoward, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Good point but this is not her site.
  • restlessdesign, on 10/11/2007, -3/+12I love when people put "Valid XHTML" at the bottom of the page, and then the site doesn't validate:
    http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.larissameek.com%2F
    • fullman, on 10/11/2007, -0/+11Um, it's the YouTube plugin embed that doesn't validate. Duh? Don't be an ass.
    • jonnyq, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4... which will be perfectly valid HTML5/XHTML5 when the standard is finished :-)
  • frantic24, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3saw her picture and had to research... dude, she's for real with a hot name to boot. Holla Larissa!!
  • murcielago2nd, on 10/11/2007, -6/+0Hmm.. down again.
    http://www.kortingkorting.nl
  • Errik, on 10/11/2007, -15/+4UMMMM The author uses the term "Futurism" to describe STAR TREK?!?!?!? WHAT THE HELL? READ YOUR ART HISTORY! Futurism is a modernist movement from the early 20th century, not sci-fi illustration.

    Also "Colagism"??? are you ***** me? That example is CUBISM.

    PLEASE BEFORE YOU WRITE AN ARTICLE ABOUT DESIGN OR ART, KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT!

    • Errik, on 10/11/2007, -10/+2Yes digg me down for calling out a badly written and historically inaccurate article about art and design, which is actually what I have a degree in and how I make a paycheck.

      But what do I know?
    • VSack, on 10/11/2007, -1/+11You're more than likely getting dugg down for your uber wicked awesome usage of capital lettering. Caps Lock is not cruise control for awesome.
    • mizlame, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3It wasn't written to be based on historial art movements but web-design movements using art for examples. You make some good points about art history however.
    • alxdelrge, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5I think the idea behind the -isms is you can apply it to any generic design genre.
      It's not meant to be an art class lecture, but a clever way to describe different online design trends.
      Don't get your feathers so ruffled haas.
    • Errik, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2***** that, she is wrong, very wrong, dead wrong. She is claiming to be a designer, and using the terms of design and art incorrectly. This is unacceptable.

      Also all forms of design are connected, to art as well. Be it Industrial design, Graphic Design, Interactive, Architecture, etc., they are all tied to the movements of fine art. To say its just "general" is *****.
    • franksands, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3My dear friend errik, as stated before, this is not an art history article, it is a web design article. So, by using star trek as an example she probably reaches more people. This by no means indicates that web design people are dumb, it is just that the ST reference saves time and is more adequate to the mood of the text. No question the article is historically inacurate, but there is a thousand more polite and tactful ways of delivering this points. So by being a troll you lose all your credibility.
    • crazybrit, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2look, I found a picture of errik!

      http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/4420/tantrumqp5.jpg
  • AngelDragon, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8263486442627234005

    What does she do with her tongue?
  • slapthemonkey, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Its just ok!!
  • rss2pdf, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Just because a hoster is cheap doesn't necessarily make them bad.

    The key is to be real nice to the hoster's support staff...and to warn them in advance of large impending traffic spikes. Often they can do something to help.
  • Slick36, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0No Digg from me.

    Link broken.
  • laceylady, on 10/11/2007, -2/+0Pages took forever to load, but interesting article.

    Lacey
  • rynTAU, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1It's only surefire for those that have the time and money to waste..
    • franksands, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2If you don't have time to spend in a task, you will never succeed in it.
  • kahpecuce, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0she's HOT. (I mean her design)
  • webwright, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3I would point out that (with a little research) I found out that she dated Fabio. -723 diggs for dating Fabio! EW!
  • Jerim, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1Most of what she said was pretty obvious. Nothing in the way of any insight into the styles. Just a "Look at this!" type of mentality. I am not doubting that she is accomplished, but she doesn't really say anything that gives me some confidence that this person knows what they are talking about. Give me some tips on when to use a style, when not to use it, what other styles this one goes with and which ones it will clash with. Maybe even discuss some variants of each style. As it is, she just seems like some random graphic designer who can mimic what she sees, but doesn't really understand the artistic principles at play. Good for her that she can correctly identify and group the styles, but is that all?
  • spidoman, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Just remember guys, you can never have too much flash. :P
  • Dracos, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1More graphic design that wants to be web design.

    Buried inaccurate.
  • Linc4Justice, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Dug down for overemphasis on graphics rather than site layout.

    Dug it right back up again when I saw what she looked like. :-)
  • spectre_25gt, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2It's a great article, but the author really should take more care throwing around all these "isms". It's plain to see that there's no background in art history there. #5.1 is a perfect example. It has nothing at all to do with futurism.

    Actual example of futurism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Blast2.jpg
  • smacksaw, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Noticeably missing from the list:

    New FARK.com style
  • BeyondGoodNEvil, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I don't care what anyone says. Collagism is ugly. "Futurism" is nice, but is usually unfuturistically wasteful, with lots of useless metallics/gear ornamentation. The future will be more like how Apple's software is going, minimizing the functionless framing and maximizing the content. That's efficiency, that's the future.
    • franksands, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1One thing is how the future actually is, and another is something that looks "futuristic", like the star trek tricorder.
  • Killwize, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Should be named 7 Web Design-isms: 7 Unoriginal overused styles that Work

    Wordism? You mean Visual communication? MHA!
  • megaman2005, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0My personal favorite is less is more.
  • alabut, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Holy crap, what a great article. This is definitely a few levels above the usual articles on "style" as applied to web design. It reminds me of the book Fresh Styles For Web Designers: Eye Candy From The Underground.

    Link to Amazon's page of the book: http://tinyurl.com/2gddeo

    Yeah, it's an old book but still a great read and was pretty influential on me personally back in the day.
  • angle45media, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0has anybody met this web designer...i heard she's super hot
  • iamdexter, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1That is an interesting article.

    http://www.naturalizer-shoes.org/
  •  

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