Hello,
I'm Mervi Eskelinen!
An artist, nerd and sorcerer, dedicated to make world softer and better for everyone, and to get you to make more art. Make art, change the world!
The monotonic web
There's a new version of Twitter. Some say it looks great, some say it looks like crap. I say it looks like every other site.
Currently there are a couple of big trends for websites. There's flat design and there's the whole idea of "visual web". Basic colours, clear blocks, simplifying to a fault and lots of big images, which are preferably photos. It looked good for a while, until it spread everywhere.
Now the web is very monotone. Most sites look the same and it's hard to make a distinction between them. The fancy and techy ones go with the approach Twitter has taken. Beauty related web stores are all black and white with a little red here and there. It feels like going from the same site to another same site.
Sure, what has worked for them should work for you. However this is stupid way to think. When everything looks the same it's really difficult to create and maintain a defined and distinguishable brand. If all the brands use the same or very similar colours, fonts and other visuals how do they differ in other ways?
At the same time the web designers and their clients seem to forget many, if not most, people use web hastily. The bounce rates of websites is a good proof of that. They (or rather we) bounce around the websites in the pace of a scared bunny. Stopping to think and read is very rare. When a website looks the same as the previous it triggers a thought: "Didn't I just leave this site, why am I back? Must go."
Riding with the trends and doing the same thing as that successful brand did is the easy track. Unfortunately it's not the shortcut to success. It's bad for your brand, it's bad for your customers. Instead of going monotone try your own tone. When the other's go right try going left. Don't trust anyone who tells you to copy. Have a website that looks different while it's easy to use. Give the web some colour and depth.
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