Of course, these are just my opinions, feel free to add your own Backgrounds Black - Out! It's too harsh and minimizing, something about it reminds me of my first webpage I made where I made periods blink so it'd look like stars Grey, white and blue backgrounds - In! A nice smoky grey color makes a great background if you pair it with a white content box. for example: http://creative.gettyimages.com/source/home/home.aspx. It's soft on the eyes and isn't distracting. Dark blue backgrounds are nice as well, and pure white is making a comeback Colors Pastels - In! Strong, dark colors mixed with black - Out! Silvers and greys are also in, especially for text. Grey also goes with everything. Gradients are good if used in the header, and only once. Using a gradient 2-3 times ruins the effect. Shapes Squares, In! Beveled, soft, rounded shapes - Out! Design Centered, thin column like designs - In! This is most likely from the influence of blogs, where the content is displayed as a thin column, with links to the left or right and a banner on top. Wider designs can be hard to read sometimes, especially on higher resolution computers. Text Center aligning text on a page, especially if it's a paragraph - Out! Hard to read, since there's no right hand rule. Crazy cool "halloween" fonts - Out! Hard to read, arial and arial black is making a comeback.
I think black is very classy and "in" if used correctly. see the Mustang site in my sig for an example. But yes, as a generalization I agree with you... but if everyone designed websites the same then the web wouldn't be a very colorful place
Yes, but your black is still a shade off, it's not black black #00000 or whatever the hex is. There's still lots of rooms to expand and play within...and these aren't rules just things I've noticed on 'bigger' sites
also i'm noticing a lot of 1 px borders around blocks of text..looks nice and wordpress's login screen is very nice (with the big textbox and text)
There are places where black rocks. The Billet Specialties site used to show their chrome parts on black background. Boy did they pop. Now their site is boaring. Yawn. The pats just do not show up well on white background. Shannon
that site would probably look better in a darker color. of course this is just my interpretation of it...it's like fashion you know? how it has seasons, different colors, trends, etc...why not web design?
Big font (text-size) IN. Small fonts could look minimalist, but they are completely OUT, so hard to read.
Orange seems to be making a come back as well, because of Google Analytics As well, CSS borders 1px, dotted/dashed whatever. Just a darker color than the element it's containing looks gorgeous.