You’re seeing one website. And then you’re seeing another website. And then another website. Oh wait… Are you?
Sure you are. It’s not your fault that many different websites often use the same design material over and over again. That happen a lot today and that’s not what they call breakthrough. Let’s take a look of some overused web design material that we could find spreading wildly in the internet.
1. Drop Shadows
This object is so plain and boring. What should I do with it. Oh maybe I can just 3-D it up by giving it the drop shadow effect. That’s what I’m talking about. The good old drop shadow. It turns everything from dull to awesome. And when I say everything, that’s literally EVERYTHING that EVERYONE puts on the Internet.
2. Ink Splatter
Obviously, ink splatter is cool. It builds grunge atmosphere in your website. But once again, it’s everywhere. And today’s grunge seems not so ‘Kurt Cobain’s grunge anymore.
3. Hand-shaking Stock Image
One man made make an offer, the other man agree to take the offer. They make a deal and they shake hand. A photographer came close enough to take picture of their hands, but not the face. He uploaded it to free stock image site and those two men becomes an Internet celebrity today. Or maybe they don’t. Their hands are more popular than themselves because it’s always there almost every time you visit a site. Any sites.
4. Helvetica
Wait a second. Isn’t Times New Roman used more often than Helvetica? Sure it is. But Times are default fonts, what can you do about that. But Helvetica, we must admit, the most heavily used font by most designer. Now is there anything wrong with the font (beside some people saying it spaced too tightly)? Of course not. The only thing wrong with this font is that all designer use it.
5. Reflection Effect
Here’s another plain object. We cannot ‘drop shadow’-ed it because they say drop shadow are so common (and lame). What would you do? If the first thing in your mind is to apply some reflection effect, try to think again and dig deeper. If the second thing on your mind is still reflection effect. Maybe that’s why reflection effects are everywhere in the internet world.
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Keywords: design concept, design element, web design, Web Usability
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