Many of these designs are horribly busy. They are not inviting. Even the Minimalist looks, well, decidedly NOT minimalist.

Remember, this is a programmer saying this. We are the font of all busy UIs. Since there’s no commentary from the author, I’d like to give my, admittedly, non-designer, programmer, __end-user__ views on as many as I can fit time for.

Superawesome: Looks like a dev made it and a designer came in after and centered it and put images atop each block.

Leids: Someone *really* likes the idea of newspaper clippings pinned to the wall. Beyond busy and bordering on gaudy. Newspaper clippings. On a wall.

Kokoro: Where the heck am I supposed to focus? Is there any thought to eye flow? I can’t find it. The combination of the pink triangles and the moire pattern at bottom right make my eyes vibrate. Unpleasant.

UX: Again, a dev made a basic calendar-style grid and a designer came back through and tried to break it up with multi-block-sized chunks, but it’s still a bunch of blocks stacked atop each other. At least there’s eye flow – top left(red) to top right to mid-mid-right(smoker) to mid-right(long column) to bottom-left(wide block). At no point does any of it make me want to go there.

TRUF: Well, it’s got more pictures, but it’s still a dime-a-dozen big-focus-block-at-top and many-smaller-blocks-below that is ubiquitous on the web these days. I’m seeing a trend here. Dev made a grid, designer modified it. The ***layout*** is boring. The images are mildly interesting, particularly in juxtaposition.

Bygone: If you changed the palette to grayscale, it’s the Wall Street Journal. No, not the site, the actual, physical paper. From the extremely broken up article teasers all over the front page to the “navigation” on the right. I like the muted font-color choices, but that’s not layout. And look at all that wasted space up top. (I remind you, I am a programmer. That’s wasted space. ) This layout may be the most “interesting” so far. Still, I wouldn’t call it excellent layout. It’s a grid. Devs do this every day and designers complain about how boxy and busy our UIs are. Maybe UI design has gone the Volvo way.

Our Hype: I’ll skip the colors this time. It’s about layout, right? Because those ARE hideous. They scream 1995. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a blink or a marquee, to be honest. To the Layout! How is the “excellent layout”? The articles are arranged in 5 thin columns. At least they’re not all the same height. How excellent is your design when that’s an actual complement?

I’m out of time for now. I may do more later, but so far, I’m seeing a lot of programmer UIs that a designer has glossed over with a little color and font, with the occasional “make this block 2×1 and this one over here 1×2 and – stay with me – let’s make this one 4×2! Crazy!”

I’m not saying designers are awful or little better than programmers, but these particular UIs, if they are the epitome of excellence in layout, give the suits more and more ammo when they say “we don’t really need an artist, do we?”

What happened to innovation and uniqueness and eye flow? Why is it that the “best” design to my non-designer eyes – as far as I got in my commentary – looks identical to a 128-year-old print periodical whose graphic design has not materially changed since the 1940s? (see paragraph 4 of Beginnings at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_Street_Journal)

Here’s a serious question: Is this the best that web designers, graphic designers, and artists have to offer in the way of ***layout***? Pretend all those pages are in black and white with no images. Blocks. Just black or white. Ok, I’ll give you gray, also.
In fact, I’d love to see someone take each screenshot and simply photoshop over each block with a shade of gray that most matches the value of the image/text therein.

THEN let’s see how excellent the layouts are. I personally thing they are busy and uninteresting or overstimulating(which has the same effect).