Fads and Fashions

Lately flat design is in fashion. So is the huge feature image for every post, a trend which results in a page full of images and very little text.

I’m happy that there are fads and fashions in web design. It creates job security for a lot of web design firms.

I don’t mind the flat designs. They don’t interfere with getting to the content you want. But the trend toward pages full of nothing but images with few words and required clicks to get to the content bugs me. I guess I’m just a word person. Images are nice, but I want the content.

I know there’s a lot of research that proves that images attract the attention and gather the eyeballs. But do they really mean more people are actually reading the content? There’s no image with this post. Did you read it?

3 thoughts on “Fads and Fashions”

  1. You’re not gonna like this… I am behind on my feedreader because of JMP’s visit and I’ve ready almost nothing over the last couple of weeks.

    I clicked over to this, from Facebook. Because… the image that was pulled in on Facebook was of your balloon photo and I LOVE YOUR BALLOON PHOTOS.

    When I got here and saw there were no more balloon photos attached to the post I almost just closed the tab but… I’m in a little blog reading withdrawal and figured what the heck, the zoo can wait, I’ll read it.

    I’m not a good test case for your question but the image on facebook really was the only reason I took a minute to click. The lack of image did almost cause me to leave without reading — but that’s not my normal practice.

    And no, generally speaking, in my experience — an image doesn’t mean people are clicking and reading. It doesn’t even mean they are clicking…

    1. @Denise, I don’t hate it, because I think you’re an example of what the research is showing. Images attract. Look at Pinterest, for Pete’s sake. I have an old fashioned attachment to writing, which is why I’m complaining about the image trend.

      A couple of points. The balloon image you saw on Facebook is the “default” image for the blog and if there is no other image in a post for the sharing tool to pick up, it uses that one. I think it’s a bit misleading. A logo (if I had one) would be more appropriate.

      Secondly, in listening to web developers talk about creating responsive designs, the recommended image size is often 100% width. Using a 100% width image in an iPhone or iPad display makes sense, but on a desktop display I think it’s often too much.

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