When to Break the Rules of Good Design
What is “good” design, even? You may have noticed that most websites look the same now. Part of that has to do with most sites using prepackaged content management systems like WordPress or Webflow. I’ve used both in the past for both myself and clients. However, the result of the compromise of convenience was sameness. A lot of companies want sameness now. Copy-and-paste templates are brand-safe. But is playing it safe actually safe for all brands?
The Trap of Sameness
Choosing the “safe” design choice will not make you stand out among competitors. Safe is not memorable. Safe does not tell a story. Something that feels too prepackaged and corporate-friendly will end up appealing to no one because it is trying to appeal to everyone. What is considered “good” web design these days has all the flavor of unsalted, unsweetened oatmeal. A potential customer will not remember your site if it looks like the site of each of your competitors.
As a freelancer, what I am selling is myself, my personal brand. The truth is, almost anyone can write decent landing page copy now thanks to generative AI. When looking at the old version of my website I realised it did not differentiate me from my competitors at all. I had chosen to “play it safe” since my target audience, lawyers, skew conservative in their presentation. In an effort to appeal to my risk-adverse audience, I had forgotten the advantage of risk.
Risk-adverse clients, like lawyers, accountants, bankers, and similar professionals struggle with marketing precisely because they are afraid to try something new. A lawyer looking for a marketer is looking because their current strategy (playing it safe) is not working.
Rediscovering the Joy of Web Design
Realizing that I had sabotaged my own success by removing all personality from my site design and copy, I decided to return to my roots. Like most millennial digital marketers, my first experience of building a personal brand was designing my MySpace page back in the early 2000s. Back then, you could customize your profile page to reflect your personality.
Recently many of the Y2K fashion trends have made a comeback. Fashion design trends are always reflective of wider social trends. The truth is that people long for the fun of the early internet when social media was actually social. As I was auditing my own website and personal brand, I realized that in order to make my personal brand personal again I needed to embrace my inner adolescent whimsy.
Breaking Rules and Playing Games
Armed with my recent epiphany, I cancelled my webflow subscription and rebuilt my entire site around a central idea: How do I make my visitors feel like they are having fun while reading what is essentially a digital CV? Obviously MySpace was a major design influence, because that was the last time web browsing felt fun. However, I knew I needed to dig deeper. What is synonymous with fun? Games.
Early test audiences of my new design ideas noted the video game “vibe” of the rebrand. However, my inspiration also came from IRL sources. Back in the US I participated in some immersive, and interactive art installations. Once as an artist for a pop-up installation in New Orleans, and once as a visitor at MeowWolf in Denver. These experiential events or installations combine the narrative and thematic model of haunted houses and theme parks, with the interactive fun of playgrounds and live action role-playing games.
Of course, I don’t possess the financial nor coding ability to turn my website into an actual video game. However, I realized I could still pick a fun narrative theme and make it feel a little bit like a science fiction thriller. How will that affect this website’s SEO and GEO? Well, that remains to be seen. The important part is that now I am certain that any human eyes that view my website won’t soon forget it!
