The Web Design Rules That You Can Break

Over time, rules have been established that ensure web design remains consistent and usable across the board – but does this mean that you have to follow these rules all the time? Of course not! Especially when breaking one of them would leave you with an amazing website. These are the rules that you can (and should) break.

#1 – Do not display the horizontal scroll bar
The main reason for this rule is that most mice do not actually have a horizontal mouse wheel, making it awkward to scroll left or right. Many internet users find it annoying to bring the cursor down to the bottom of the page simply to read a word or two that extends past the width of their browser. There are, however, ways that a web designer can creatively utilize the horizontal scroll bar.

#2 – Use a minimal number of fonts
Usually, having too many fonts can cause conflict on a website and work to overwhelm the user. This is because each font has its own personality, and nobody likes too many personalities crammed in together. In web design, however, this can work in the website is very text orientated – the conflict actually engages the user.

#3 – Do not use too many colours
Often, web designers steer clear of too much colour for fear of appearing a total amateur (you know, those guys who use everything from flaming headlines to blinking text). It can, however, be easy for designs to be too safe, giving them a dead or lifeless appearance. You need to push the boundaries a little, just don’t go overboard.

#4 – Don’t have a landing page

This tends to be a long raging disagreement between web designers and their clients – the clients want a cute little landing page to welcome visitors and the designers want to do anything but. There are a number of reasons why web designers feel this way – firstly, Google ranks these pages pretty low and, secondly, the slow down the time it takes a user to find the information they’re after.

At the end of the day, no one in the web design industry should be afraid of breaking the rules – but only when their current project calls for such a rule to be broken (and do so sparingly). Remember to do this in moderation and you could end up with some fantastic looking websites that other designers could only dream of being able to create.