How Web Designers Can Avoid ‘Scary’ Design

If you are currently working as a web designer (or have anything to do with the online industry) you should be browsing the internet on a daily basis, looking for what to do and what not to do. There is plenty of positively shocking design out there and, by familiarizing yourself with what constitutes a ‘scary’ design, you can help to avoid making the same mistakes in your own projects. So, what makes for ‘scary’ design?

• Scrolling and blinking text
  Whilst the web designers who decide to use this horrible design technique generally manage to get the contrast right, text the scrolls or blinks is just downright annoying for visitors.
• Inconsistent links and colours
  For each project that a web designer tackles, they should choose one font (perhaps two, for a larger website) and stick to it. Using multiple fonts – especially on the same page or even the same section – really just makes the site look messy and unprofessional. You should also avoid using multiple text colours, as this can draw attention away from the links in your content (or cause text to misrepresent itself as a link).
• Excessive page clutter
  When web designers stuff as much content as they possibly can into a page, they are risking the visitor (and even the search engines) missing some highly relevant or important item, as its buried deep within useless paragraphs of text.
• Highlighted text
  A good web designer who has been apart of the industry for a considerable amount of time should know that there is no need to highlight text – settle on a background colour and choose a text colour that contrasts nicely with it. Many designers make the mistake, however, of choosing two colours that don’t contrast at all (white writing on a yellow highlight), two colours that have too much contrast (red writing on a purple highlight), or two colours that just don’t match at all (red writing on a pale blue highlight).
• Sound
  This is a mistake that should only be made by amateur web designers but, unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. The inclusion of sound on a website, especially when the designer fails to provide an on/off switch or volume controls, is one of the biggest pet peeves of internet users.

Web designers should be well equipped to avoid making the above mistakes in the course of their day-to-day work, but many designers are still managing to include them in some form or manner. Take a look at your own practices and favourite techniques to determine whether you are making any of these mistakes.