Standard Drop-shadows

So any designer in the world knows what I’m talking about, (or should I say any designer worth his salt), that generic drop shadow that comes pre-packaged as the drop-shadow setting: 75 opacity, 120 angle, global lighting on, distance of 5, spread of 0, and size of 5, at least that’s the standard on mine.

That little gem of a drop shadow is sure to make even the most progressively awesome ideas look like crap. But it’s used all the time by novices at design, they just check the box and go “Oh how pretty now it’s in 3D”, well it’s not bub, in fact I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a shadow like that in real life what-so-ever, and lets get real here, not everyone of your designs is going to have the light source as 120 degrees.

Standard bevels

I can’t for the life of me figure out what the hell a standard bevel would be used for. It looks like a train wreck, some sort of strange metal alloy that attached it self to your design and morphed it into a cheap ploy on the old window’s pipe screen saver. It’s just ugly in every sense of the word.

So please if you’re going to use a bevel at all, learn how to use them, I’m not going to say that I even know how to, there are rare instances where I use the damn thing and it actually looks good, so I personally avoid it. But don’t think you’re being creative and original by slapping on a bevel, you’re just not.

Over-using Script fonts

This hatred comes strictly from my experience with my High school newspaper. Every creative heading is done in a script font that’s so rough on the eyes it looks like freaking Helen Keller wrote the damn thing while her hands were tied behind her back. Script fonts aren’t bad, they can be absolutely lovely in a design, but tacking on a script font when it’s not needed just ruins any design under the sun.

As a general rule use script fonts for things that are important and if they go with the general flow of the page. Blog titles as script fonts can look lovely provide it’s the only thing in script. Script fonts should always be used sparingly, and the ones you do use should be just script enough to let the viewer get the point, too many loops and curls make things illegible and ugly.

Bottom “interaction” bars or advertisements

If you don’t know what I’m talking about consider yourself lucky, few sites use them and get them right. For those of you who don’t I’ll inform you, they’re those bottom bars that pop up on certain sites taking up the whole damn screen and are usually an advertisement or filled with listen to this song, or this many people are online, chat with this person ect.

I get it, the internet is a place full of social connection, but I have a Facebook, a twitter, a Flickr, a Tumblr, an old Myspace, and now a freaking Gmail buzz (for some damn reason), I’m tired of socially connecting with people. For once I’d just like to go to a website and read the content, then leave. Not sit around and talk, not listen to your crappy playlist; leave.

As a general rule of thumb I leave the moment I see one of them, all the time every time.

A Miss-understanding of what content truly is.

Ok so this one isn’t design related, but it’s still crucial. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been on a site and seen list after list of designs etc. Don’t get me wrong, I freaking love list, because when I’m in need of inspiration that’s where I go, and so they fit their purpose. However don’t go calling your site a content-oriented site if you’re not giving any content.

If you have a design blog, use it. You know something about design, regardless of how small or crappy you are so let your ideas get out there. I mean what’s the worse that could happen, someone could disagree with you and maybe call you out and change your whole perspective on design?

Whatever the case may be, put something out there for the readers to read not just skim over. If they see a good article they’re going to want to read it, and if they keep seeing good articles they’re going to want to keep reading them.

Too much Minimalism

Yeah I know what you’re thinking, but it exist, I’ve seen it my friends and it’s horrible. I love minimalism as much as the next guy, and I realize it can be a wonderful lifestyle to pro sue and make for excellent designs.

Though Minimalism with no thought put into it is just a blank page, surprise: it takes work to make something minimalistic. It takes knowledge and understanding to make things look great when they have nothing. It’s like handing in a blank paper as your essay, sure if it’s some philosophical statement for your final towards your masters degree maybe it will work. But if it’s an English paper for your High school class you’re getting a F plain and simple.

No about section

This goes for anything in the world besides social networking sites where you’re only going to be accepting the people you know. If you have a website, a blog, a company, anything make sure the people visiting know who you are.

Not only are about sections crucial for letting others now just how awesome you truly are, they let the average viewer who isn’t going to be buying your shit that you’re a regular person. With this being said, an about section that just list your achievements isn’t an about section at all, it’s an awards section. A real about section should contain voice, it should let the viewer know that you exist outside the shell of a computer, and for God-sakes unless you’re the son of sin itself throw a picture up. Hell Photoshop it if you want, but just have something that people can put a face to; it’s nice to know how the person you think it “amazingly awesome and so deep” looks every once in a while.

Gradients with no thought put in them.

The fact that I have to mention this sickens me. Generic gradients with no tweaks what so ever look just horrible. Don’t believe me try it for yourself. Take your generic black: #000000 and your generic white: #ffffff and stroke a giant line down your canvas, no go ahead I’ll wait…..See what I mean?
Yes and I do know that provided the right colors, and the correct differences in hues and all that jazz it can look really good. I use slight gradients all the time, mostly just a few colors away from white and such, so the idea of a “generic gradient” is somewhat flawed.

Regardless put some thought into your gradients, colors don’t fluctuate from light red to black in no time flat, and for Christ’s sake don’t use an orange to purple gradient ever.

Overused Grunge

This is almost the exact same thing as script fonts, the only difference is I hate grunge fonts so much more. Grunge is an okay thing, it had it’s day and it was popular for a while. Some great websites have been made using it’s styles and so I was content with it.

The problem with grunge today is when everything can be sleek and nice, why would you want to make everything look disgusting? When people see your website they want to be enticed to look further into it, you want them to go “oh how neat”. You don’t however want a giant grunged page with no flow to it.

Of course as I said above, grunge can work, if you use it right. And if you’re going for that whole rebel establishment thing it works wonderfully, but if you’re designing for a corporation or a day care it’d be best to stay away from the grunge fonts.

Using colors that have no business being together

We’ve all seen it; bad color choices, they ruin everything easily. Color is the most important part of a design, it’s the focus on everything, and one wrong color choice could ruin your design. So stop using the colors you think look cool together like puke green and Light blue, and focus on what other people think look good, I don’t know,like anything but puke green and light blue.

So what are your hates?

By no means is this a complete list of all the bad things you can do in design, hell people go to school for years just to find out how to do design Right so it's highly unlikely I just debunked the whole design career in a top ten list.

So what are your thoughts? What pisses you off more than anything? I mean anything what-so-ever, who cares if you've been taught it looks good, if it doesn't to you say so, so why not share what you find disgusting in the world of design, and go!