You got to this page from the statement that we had not (yet) received any awards for our Web pages. As I said, fine and dandy with me.
I have discovered that if something wins a design award, it probably has terrible human factors, and is the least usable design around. I learned a bit about this in the excellent book The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman, Published by Doubleday, 1990, ISBN 0-385-26774-6. I have also gained knowledge from the human factors work of Jakob Nielsen, as well as the fine information design ideas of Edward R. Tufte. One of his recent books is Visual Explanations : Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative
For Web design, there are some very good ideas in d. siegel's tips.
When we design Web pages, we try to follow these great leaders in correct interface design.
So, go ahead, and win design awards. The ability to quickly load, easily view, and easily navigate Web pages is far more important, as far as I am concerned.
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