Back when the web was in it’s infancy (and fundamentally still is) it was home to thousands of new, and by today’s design standards, hideous websites. No one knew what they were supposed to look like, or really, that we could change the way they appeared — the general visual format wasn’t quite set in stone yet. However, the technology quickly evolved, and we moved as far away from blue links and Times New Roman as we possibly could. If you need to refresh your memory on the ‘early’ days of the web The Telegraph have compiled a great list of what popular websites looked like when they first launched.

Horrible, right? It is of utmost importance that you visit that link. Since then, we’ve further developed HTML and created CSS (amongst other languages) to a point where we can create beautiful, functional websites rather effortlessly. We now have 20 additional years of knowledge than what the first web developers had. In those 20 years we’ve essentially learned how to make websites that are easy to use. This should always be our goal when creating a new website — So, why then are people disregarding what we’ve learned, and instead creating what appears to be a renaissance of bad web design? Shoddy typography, little styling, and bad images are now considered ‘cool’. All of this combined makes for a poor user-experience, but since vintage everything-else is in, why not websites, right?

I’ve compared three horriblly designed, yet popular websites, with three websites I consider to be beautiful and functional. For the purpose of not comparing apples and oranges, I’ve only selected online shopping websites.

Urban Outfitters VS Carhart

“Hmm, I think it needs another typeface.”
“Screw the Irish, let’s buy shoes!”

Sure that image looks bad, but that’s their thing. The rest of the site is beautiful.

Nasty Gal VS Fred Perry

OMG! is right. The only thing this website has going for it is the photography. Okay, so it’s not that bad, but still, why can’t the navigation line up with the image? Why is that exclamation point pink? Why aren’t the Facebook and Twitter buttons in the centre?

Ahh, a grid that is adhered to. There’s nothing fancy here, they’ve just paid attention to the alignment and spacing of the page’s elements.

Good as Gold VS Tatly

What strikes me about this site is that functionally it works great, and actually challenges the typical layout of an online store. However, poor uses of typography and vibrant colours bring the overall appearance of the site down.

Sometimes a classic approach to an online store just works best. This website still appeals to the same people frequenting the other sites, however, it is functionally sound, doesn’t incorporate any goofy graphical elements, and uses great typography to create hierarchy.

I hope what you’ve gathered from this is that you don’t need to use ugly browser defaults, overly vibrant colours, and bad typography to create a ‘cool’ website. This is just a trend which is trying to go against the grain of what we’ve worked twenty years to perfect.