10 Web Design Rules That You Can Break

As web design and design in general have evolved, rules have been established to ensure consistent and usable designs. Some of these rules were created simply because website creators abused certain principles without regard for their users. But these rules are not enforced by anyone and should be broken when necessary, especially when breaking them would lead to a stunning design. In this article, we present 10 rules that you can break if it suits your design needs.

Rule #1: Do Not Display the Horizontal Scroll Bar
A significant number of mice don’t have a horizontal mouse wheel. This makes it awkward to scroll left or right when a web page’s content extends past the sides of the browser.

It can be annoying to have to bring the mouse cursor down to the bottom of the window and drag the scroll bar over just to see a word or two that lies beyond the viewable area of the page. That said, here are some well-designed sites that put the scroll bar to work in effective ways.

Shoe Guru
Shoe Guru gets away with horizontal scrolling because it takes advantage of the way people look at shoes. People look at most products from top to bottom, but shoes are different. People’s eyes usually move across the length of the shoe. Using this habit to its advantage, Shoe Guru makes its website’s design flow in the same direction, making the motion feel natural.

Rule #2: Use a Minimal Number of Font Faces
Too many fonts usually conflict with each other and overwhelm the viewer. Each font has a personality, and too many personalities can create disorder.

To effectively use more than just a couple of fonts, a design has to be very text-oriented, and the rest of the design needs to be relatively quiet. Here are some examples of sites that use this sense of conflict and disorder to engage the user.

Rule #3: Do Not Use Too Many Colors
The fear of going too far with a design is what separates professionals from rookies and rookies from the oblivious. The oblivious try to make their designs as extreme as possible, with words on fire, blinking text, and as many colors as possible.

Rookies want to keep their designs subtle and easy on the eye, but in the end their designs can sometimes look lifeless. The following eye-pleasing designs are by some true professionals who are pushing boundaries.

Travic Isaacs
Travis Isaacs’s design has a colorful vertical gradient in the background that makes the design seem colorful throughout. This website has bright pink as its link color, which is a great choice for designers who want to create a colorful effect.

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