Bad website designs: What are your biggest pet peeves? Our designers are sharing their top visual no-nos.

A brand’s content marketing efforts can be excellent – but if the user experience doesn’t match up from a design perspective, the website has the potential to lose its credibility quickly.

At Brafton, our designers create visuals that appeal to target audiences with substantive, relevant information in an easily digestible format. Alongside the infographic marketing materials we create, our strategists are always looking at opportunities to improve UX on our client’s sites.

So, when it comes to “design no-no’s,” it’s not surprising that our designers have a few pet peeves that often end up making them click away from a potentially good website.

Here’s a few of our top design pet peeves:

When an infographic sacrifices a clean look and eye-catching illustrations for the sake of stuffing in 10 more stats than it needs. – Jesse Mack, Production Coordinator

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Unless you’re eight years old and designing your birthday invitation, ​Comic Sans is the ultimate No-No. ​- Robert Kerrigan, Graphic Designer

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Cheesy imagery!!! Come on people, make the most of that real estate ! – Brittany Cornell, Graphic Designer

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Really narrow layouts and an excess of copy, really makes it so I couldn’t kern less. – Stephen Colombo, Lead Designer

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When there are 50 different typefaces in one piece, people get so crazed with wanting to use ALL THE FONTS and don’t think about visual balance. You can do great design with 2-3 fonts, even just one family (look at Helvetica). – Tiffany Rogers, Graphic Designer

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That one cloud icon that apparently everybody secretly agreed is the only way a cloud can look (why didn’t I get the invite to this meeting?) – Jesse Mack, Production Coordinator

 

 

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When a website hasn’t updated since the 90s. Do I look like a caveman to you?​ – James Weagle, Graphic Designer

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The artist death march statement: I know what I like when I see it. – Ken Boostrom, Design Director

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A chaotic layout or when a website has just too much text and not enough breathing room. Space is important. – Tiffany Rogers, Graphic Designer 

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Infographics that use a road design to display content that has nothing to do with roads, literally or metaphorically. – Jesse Mack, Production Coordinator

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Menus at restaurants (even online versions!) either impress or depress me. It’s something so simple and beautiful when done right but hardly ever is. – Spencer Hoffman, Graphic Designer

What are your website design irks? Let us know in the comments!

Molly Buccini is Brafton's community manager. She joined the team with a background in digital journalism and social media. She's a theatre nerd, pop culture junkie and lover of summertime.