I’m a bit of a movie buff. When I was younger, it was common for me to watch 3-4 new movies at the theatre on a weekend. After a while started to regularly recognize plots from older movies in what I was watching.
In some cases it didn’t have a negative impact on my enjoyment of the movie, it’s the journey not the destination that counts, after all there are only so many stories worth telling. Some are updated to use new technologies, but the basic outline remain the same.
When I look at designs, I’m increasingly seeing older designs in them. It’s no secret that “Good artists copy, great artists steal” (Picaso), but even when someone tries to create something original, I still end up seeing something I’ve seen before.
Perhaps it’s just my mind playing tricks on me, but maybe we’ve have arrived at a place of good design principles, that lead people independently to produce the same results. Yes logos changes, colors changes, but the overall design layout and interactions remain the same.
For the same reason that many new cars look very similar, websites are starting to look very similar. Is this a bad thing? No.
Non-technical people complain to me all the time that things on websites are so different, “Why can’t the login link be in the same place for all websites?”, is a common question.
We all want a unique design to help us stand out from the millions of other websites, but is that desire hurting the user experience for your website and the web at large?
I’d love to know the thoughts of other designers…
