I read a quote recently I liked…aside from his use of a double negative. “The alternative to good design is bad design, not no design at all.” -Douglas Martin in Book Design: A Practical Introduction.
We’ve seen a LOT of websites out there that are definitely “bad design” with dozens of kitschy animated GIFS and banner ads or some that use 15 different fonts, all of which are 10 points larger than they need to be. Some clearly don’t know how to use header tags or paragraph breaks and have photos that are 2MB in size that take 2 full min to load.
Well, Douglas Martin, I believe I found a counter example to your statement. I discovered a website that clearly took the “no design at all” approach. http://www.thomaspr.com/ I’m pretty sure whoever made this train wreck has no idea what a style sheet is. Go check it out, chances are even if your not entirely happy with YOUR site, it will make you feel good about it after seeing this site.