Be critical or be nice?

I was just looking at a site and it reminded me of some of the stuff I used to do a couple of years ago in terms of the design and it got me thinking that it took a couple of years and lots of practice (100 odd sites) to realise that I have made some basic errors along the way.

Wouldn't it be right to give the right critic of a person's website, after all people post on the web gallery not just for a good seo backlink but to showcase their site. I feel now that if someone is designing websites for a living or for their business we should be a little bit more critical; obviously not to the point of being pedantic or personal but just making the poster aware of some of the best practices in the industry, there are members here with many years of design and web design experience and we should be helping people using xara to create sites to make sure that the end product looks professional, even if it is from our love of xara and to make sure it is shown in a good light.

I have been guilty in the past of holding back and not saying something and I think in their heart of hearts the poster wants to make sure that the site is the best it can be. There will of course be a critic which rubs someone up the wrong way and design can be a very personal thing; my favourite colour is not always someone else's favourite colour so on those points we should be quite but if a colour jars too much or clashes with another colour, or when text is difficult to read or the quality of an image is really bad, or something is not aligned correctly etc etc. we should speak up. Let's not play at the emperor's new clothes, let's be honest.

Good post.

I try not to upset people these days as much as I have done on occasion. I think I have a bad reputation as a critic on TG!

I think your differentiation of hobby and business sites is important. I rarely criticise hobby sites these days.

If you can be honest in a positive way then you can be helpful. It is much harder to say, your site is really terrific, but please consider using fewer colors and fewer fonts, than it is to say, your site really shows how pathetic you are as a designer and how appallingly little you know about website design.

If you look at early examples of a cartoonist's work and then look at their later work, you can see exactly the learning process you are describing sketch.

Many of the members of TG who post links to their websites have had no formal training and are learning as they go. Others have had some training and are developing quicker.

My basic rule of thumb, is if I can't find something positive to say about a person's work, is I generally don't say anything at all.

And that is probably not right either.

When giving a critique of someone's work whether a website, or DTP design I will try to start on a positive note. For example I might say the colours in the layout look nice and the basic design is good however there are two many fonts in your design... Then I might go on and explain why too many fonts isn't good.

I agree it is important to help others by offering a good critique and be honest, but it is also important to be supportive and encouraging.

Yes, giving good criticism with honesty will drive a person to improve more and encourage people to be better in their work.

Thank you for your replies, the general consensus seems to be that critique is good as long as it is positive, I would like to add that we should be be able to be critical without having to be positive first. As I said if it is a personal site that all encouragement should be given, on the other hand I have seen sites from people who wish to do this for a living which are frankly terrible and if we are not critical to them then they will at best be deluded into thinking they can do this for a living and at worse will invest much time and money into their new business without having any real talent for it, if we can let them know that then we are doing them a much needed service. As the above poster says it will encourage people to better their work without having to go through the many years of mistakes we made.

I don't think it's up to us to decide whether someone can make it as a web designer, but I know what you mean.

There are several people on TG whose journey has been quite amazing with Xara software.

The important thing about this community is that people needn't fear asking for help and that what makes the TG forums rather special. Nobody gets laughed at and everyone gets help, encouragement and constructive criticism to varying degrees.

In general, it works.

I understand that paul, I am not saying that we act as some sort of judging panel, but the right push in a certain direction can do a world of good. As can be seen on all these terrible talent shows on tv; our friends and family telling us we are good at something can be our worst enemies. Any critique I give will be constructive and from the point of view mainly as a visitor to a site.

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Originally Posted by angelize

...Then I might go on and explain why too many fonts isn't good.

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I would be curious to know why this is?

I think the more fonts you have then there is a danger of the page just looking messy. I think the perceived wisdom is that after three fonts on a page, things go downhill.

I've seen quite a few awful pages with mixed fonts, sizes and weights and it makes the page look like a jumble.

Naturally, people who know what they're doing can be the exception to the rule!

I agree that there should ideally be just one font but two fonts; one for headings and one for body text work really well, as long as the heading font is different enough from the body text. I have seen many exceptions to the rule and a good professional can make them work.

A good concise guide I found is http://www.prodo.com/blog/web-design...b-design-tips/ clearly explains without going into too much detail which can put newbies off.

@skech -- I enjoy criticizing your commercial websites, via the X-U forum. It is easy for me to spot areas where the content could sell 'harder'... from a copy or product illustration viewpoint. A strong sales message seems to be a constant... outside of trends in web design. But I am increasingly uncomfortable criticizing -- that design trends area. Retired for three years now; haven't kept up. So when I look at one of your websites -- as far as the layout goes -- I just assume that what I'm seeing is current, and looks 'normal' to the average customer. As long as the navigation is dead-simple, the design's OK. Or at least yours are, since you've spent a great deal of time and effort on all this.

But going back to the message. The headline, the selling points, the illustrations. And the customer-response method -- the free phone number, the e-mail contact, whatever's the simplest easiest way to bring the customer into the showroom... physically or for an on-line purchase. Sales are the lifeblood of business and the website is absolutely amazing as a VERY low cost way to increase sales.

Anyway, if someone asks for criticism, they'll get both positive and negative from me... on the sales-message aspects... and on basic presentation to get that message in someone's face and get a response. And that response is easily measured, like the results from direct mail. Obviously, if the website design does not bring results, the design is bad. Period. Which also makes it hard to criticize. You could make a design that -- to me -- looks like a dog's breakfast, but pulls customer responses like crazy. And that site would be the most beautiful of all.

Obviously, if the website design does not bring results, the design is bad. Period.

Well I'm not so sure. You can have a website with poor, overpriced product. Can you really always say that the website is badly designed in those circumstances?

I agree on both counts. As a designer it is up to me to make sure that the site is as good as it can be (or rather as good as the client allows us to make it - when it comes to design by committee, all sites are bad, the ones we are left to design are the best ones). But when it comes to the actual content of the site; prices, order process etc, then that is upto the client and sometimes they can ruin a whole site.

When I know that a site has been designed for a client I will only comment on the design, when it is a site by the designer/client then I will make comments on the selling points etc. That is why I do not understand some comments on my site about the sales message (because such things are out of my control and beyond my brief)

I will give you an example. I designed a nice website for a client and not only was the site appreciated by HIS clients but we managed to get him number two for his non geographical keyword (google uk) eg. 'fish tanks' and not 'fish tanks in leeds' (as an example) and were expecting him to do well and going by his google analytics account he was doing very well (7000 hits per month) but he complained that he was not selling any fish tanks and we pointed out that it was not our responsibility; we had him at a high position, he had a very low bounce rate etc but we pointed out that his prices were 30 to 40% higher than other online stores and that was the reason he was not selling any. Any way that was a while back and now his site is now where on google as it has been down for over a year as he did not pay his hosting company and ended up loosing his domain name as well.

Anyway I was getting of track. Critique should be given on the design, layout, colours, quality of pics, type etc.

@skech -- "Critique should be given on the design, layout, colours, quality of pics, type etc..." Understood. I made the mistake of thinking of the website designer's role as more like an ad agency, rather than like a graphic artist. Won't comment on the headlines or body text in future!

@pauland -- "You can have a website with poor, overpriced product." On second thought, you're right. It's like a print ad, where success can be measured by an increase in customers coming to the point of sale... but the agency will still get fired if the product is junk or the price too high! Life isn't fair sometimes.

Problem is that computers have made the process of designing ads (and now websites) so easy that clients have the illusion that they can do it themselves, and that they don't really need you like they used to, before PCs. When I was self-employed, my goal was to make the most money for the least work... and the most money came from designing ads for publications with tight deadlines. Everything else came a long way behind... brochures, annual reports, etc. The more time the client had, the more changes they made, and while I could bill per-hour for changes, the $$-per-hour was far, far less than the charge for the ad itself, where I had variable pricing depending on how rich the client was, how large the ad was, and how significant the publication was. Like a LOT more for a small ad in the Wall Street Journal, as opposed to an ad of any size in our local paper. It worked; had a good run for 15 years following the tight deadlines = maximum profits guideline.