Put the Mouse Down and Nobody Gets Hurt

One thing that really bugs me is when people directly copy the design of another website.  It is intellectual property theft, plain and simple.  Unless the owner/designer of the site gives their permission – don’t do it.  Period.  It is the graphical equivalent of plagiarism. Disclaimer:  the design of this site is not original.  I installed WordPress on the server as a blogging tool, and this was the default look.  I thought the design looked nice and clean, so I used the same design throughout the site.  I did tweak the design just a bit, in order to improve the contrast for the text.  I am not a graphic artist.  When I work on a commercial site, I have a couple of artists I’ve used in the past that do solid work.  I can evaluate a design, but I could not produce it from scratch.  A good artist can do amazing things with the placement of a thin grey line in ways that would not even occur to me. However, I wanted the other pages to look consistent with the blogging page, and so I copied the look and feel onto the other pages.  I don’t believe that is inconsistent with the previous section, because I believe I have the rights to use this look and feel (just like lots of other folks). However, there is a difference between plagiarism and research.  It not just OK to look at other websites, it is crucial.  Look at TONS of other sites.  Get a feel for what is current and useful.  Look at how fonts are used.  Look at headlines versus text.  Get a feel for arrangements and spacing.  Note the way good sites use space as well as they use images and text.  Notice the small highlight elements, such as lines and colors. One thing I would urge caution about is using “award winning” sites as a guide.  Too often I’ve seen sites win awards that were visually attractive, but failed in usability.  Huge bloated sites made with Flash with weird UI paradigms often “win” — but would fail in usability testing.  (I told you I was opinionated! :>)  )  There are exceptions to this rule — sites for musicians, for example — but overall beware. Do NOT use this site as a guide. <grin>  Again, I am not a graphic artist.  For this site I’m just trying for clean, not glorious.  Darnit Jim, I’m a geek, not an artist! The other thing that can be fun to do is to look at hideous sites and learn from them.  A site I recommend for this is web pages that suck.  It has a new site every day, as well as rules to make good sites, and galleries of historically hideous sites. So look around and learn — but don’t steal. :>)