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Most common mistakes made by new designers
Well I will quickly run through a list of common mistakes which people new to designing make. They can easily be fixed and will make your designs look so much better. I have also included some examples which I have made many years ago 
Bad choice of colour. The most common mistake which makes designs look horrible is using bad colours. The most common mistake is to use extremely bright colours. Other bad mistakes is using black for background all the time. The use of #000 makes the design look extremely dark and really highlights the brights colours causing the design to hurt your eyes.
Terrible choice and use of font. This one really bigs me when I look at new designers work. When designing stick to the basic fonts: Arial, Trebuchet MS, Verdana etc. Also when designing in photoshop do not put anti-aliasing on content text. This makes it look horrible and is not available if you coded the design. (Anti aliasing is making font strong, crisp etc, set to none).
Making everything huge!. This is a common mistake and can also be made by making everything too small. A quick guideline I would give is to make you content text 11-12pt in size. Often it just takes a while to get the sense of scale when designing. It should hopefully begin to come to you if you keep designing. This mistake can also be made if you change screen resolution.
Using outer glows and shadows all the time. A lot of people seem to do this at first. They make text or objects have severe and very noticeable shadows or outer glows. If you are going to use them please keep them as subtle as possible to avoid them ruining your designs. When I look at the banner - which I have a preview of - I would actually think it would be good if it wasn’t for the outer shadow.
Over use and too severe gradients. Again this is a case of being subtle. When you add a gradient you must keep it subtle otherwise it will just stick out and look strange. Use gradient in different directions can also make a design look pretty strange so try and be consistent. This is a mistake which appears to be getting more popular. Gradients can be great but only if they are used at the right time and are using the correct colours.
Making the designs almost impossible to code. This can be a result of using too many gradient in different directions. When designing I like to on change something in one axis - x or y. That way you can use css when you code it and use repeat-x or repeat-y.
Thinking your designs are great. Last but not least this problem is psychological and will hold you back. Listen to what people say when they give you tips on your designs and remember; not everyone has the same tastes.
9 Responses
Hello there, yes I am from Glasgow, which part are you from?
Great to see a fellow scot blogging :-)!
- Michael- August 3rd, 2007 at 2:12 pm
You are absolutely right. Each of the above do have a rightful place and can work if used correctly. People new to design often think this is what a website should be like and make these mistakes mentioned.
on some sites i have read to make fonts large so as the elderly can read, and some like this one says smaller fonts. I like the sites that have a font size choice, I suppose I should look into that.
- Jordan- August 11th, 2007 at 2:47 am
Good article overall but I would probably point some people to good resources about how they can get guidelines for good design:
Bad colors: I like using the color scheme generator at wellstyled.com to get a good sense of what colors to use.
Bad fonts: In web design you’re limited to only a few fonts anyways. As for not anti-aliasing, I’m pretty sure that all modern browsers add some sort of anti-aliasing to the text in web pages and IE definitely does with “Clear-type”. Text without any anti-aliasing looks horrid except at the smallest of sizes. And of course the whole argument doesn’t apply to text in images such as logos and headers. So I would say use anti-aliasing unless you’re using a very small font.
Making every big/small: Use the rule of thirds to proportion out and align your design sections: header, content, logo, side content etc.
Outerglow/shadows: I agree with this except in the subtle cases to give depth. I would also add things like reflections, they are way over-used.
The rest I agree with except with the caution that a lot of designs that people think are impossible to code can actually be coded if you think creatively and there are very few designs that cannot be coded.
Thanks! site. Very nice ,
Appreciates…thanks a lot !!
Nice tips, I am actually a criminal to the outerglow and shadows one myself lol
I think we all have been made such mistakes
yes its hard to receive and accept a critic at times, but its needed if we want to improve as a learning designers
I don’t know, I think that all of those so called design faux pars have their own rightful place and usage.
Bad fonts is always a no no but then again, who is to say what is good and what is bad? It is personal or client taste inevitably. Making things large is practical in some circumstances, most of the time people do it to hide poor content or lack of. And it is no good doing all your text at 8px and banners etc at 10px if your trying to market towards partcially sighted readers is it!
Gradients are great, they are a fantastic way of creating the illusion of style, but over use is definately over kill.
It would be good next time to provide both sides of the argument otherwise it looks biased, everything in its place.
Keep posting and i’ll keep reading!
Andy