Web Pages That Suck

Conceived in 1996 and still going strong, Vincent Flanders' website is something of an internet icon. It helped me design my first websites and it's probably helped thousands of others avoid the most serious of web design pitfalls over the years too - not by dry academic instruction, but by the bad examples set by others. It walks a narrow line. On one side, the humor that comes from finding a genuinely sucky example of web design - especially if it's allegedly professional too - is based on the banana skin principle: not only is there always something just ahead that will bring you down if you don't pay attention, but the rest of the world will collapse in laughter when it happens. In this case, that banana skin is the limitless potential of self-publication, which offers all sorts of disasters in the making for an overenthusiastic or under-prepared web page creator. And when he falls, whether by creating something unreadable, unviewable, impossible to navigate, or just totally over the top, we laugh. And it's up to our own honesty with ourselves to decide whether that's a friendly laugh or a mean, patronizing one. On the other side, studying mistakes, either other people's or one's own, not only improves the viewer's skills, it really does improve the standards of web design in a broader way too. Many site designers, once they know their site is featured here, go back and do a redesign that works better. Of course many don't, as well, which means that their examples of the worst kind of online publication are there still, to educate more of us. But even if one bad site becomes a good one, that's progress. Generally, the site stays somewhere in the safe zone which leaves you, the viewer, to get from it what you will - laughs, education, or both. It's been useful and popular enough to spawn a couple of books and go through many design changes itself, over the years, and even the development of Web 2.0, with its characteristic minimalism and complex scripting, hasn't prevented a wealth of ongoing suckiness out there. It's a heads-up to publishers in the most direct way, telling them to remember that they're supposed to be designing for the public, not for themselves, and attempting to soften the blow of criticism with a smile. If you're a designer and you're sucky, be afraid - Vincent Flanders will find you...