No, not the ones you’re thinking of. I had lunch with my favorite Web Producer today and we were talking about the good possibility that old, old web design will look really nice soon. You know the kind of which I speak — lots of Times Roman text, purple and blue underlines, multicolor headlines, and odd animated gifs.
He said that in one of his classes, the term “dirty design” was what one of the kids called it, and I think that’s right on. I will keep looking for samples of dirty design (perhaps mostly on Geocities, the worst purchase Yahoo! ever made), but it’s not too hard to find.
Importantly, it’s my duty to note that there is both a class and a technology component to dirty design; folks who do not have the time, education, patience, or druthers to build an easily navigable, useful site are not designers and shouldn’t be held up the same light as designers should. Afterall, we don’t ask nurse practioners to heal the same way we do doctors and we don’t judge little league the way we do pro ball. But, and here’s the butt, it would still be really cool to see some nicely designed, bad-looking websites. Send them to me?