Comments on: The ugly truth: why beautiful wins in 2012

By: John

John — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 09:52:22 +0000

Thanks, and I don’t disagree as well, obviously a site that looks like it was created in 1995 isn’t going to get the interest that one with current design will.

By: Phil

Phil — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:38:37 +0000

Great article Ed — definitely the best thing I’ve read in 2012! Seems like you’ve sparked some nice form versus content debate. Of course it seems that the clear winners know how to best straddle innovations of both. Facebook’s timeline is a great example. I was becoming extremely bored with its look (and mine), but now that it’s made my experiences and posts look “cooler”, i.e. more beautiful, it’s had a surprising way of gaining my respect back.

By: opyate

opyate — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:21:21 +0000

You mean 366 days — 2012 is a leap year :-P

By: Edward Aten

Edward Aten — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 03:03:56 +0000

John, Dont disagree, but was trying to make a somewhat different point: Emotional connections arent the only thing that matter but they are at the leading edge of a lot of innovation right now – especially in the social world.

Also Prakash, Craigslist hasnt won forever. :)

By: Edward Aten

Edward Aten — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 03:00:11 +0000

S, Great point. The tools have to be flexible enough to create the connections that matter to users – something that is probably different for many people. – Ed

By: FileSpnR

FileSpnR — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:48:46 +0000

I was just thinking about this, in reference to video, and decided on a tactic to try and exploit.

By: Prakash Dhake

Prakash Dhake — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:22:45 +0000

Completely agreed. Another example is craigslist.org. I think, ‘beauty’ will surely help you to attract customers/clients in the beginning but if you are not offering any ‘value’ to them, then it is hard to survive. I might get attracted to a blog with beautiful webpage but if the posts are useless I will not go there again.

By: Armine

Armine — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 17:10:18 +0000

Great article and i must agree “looks do matter” and this was the fundamental idea behind the launch of our music service http://www.viinyl.com (disclosure: i’m the founder). We’ve been pegged as the About.me of songs.
Where each song gets its own visually appealing site and the goal is to provide en enhanced music experience around music by adding visuals, artwork, notes, lyrics, info, etc. It’s made to seduce fans ( as they say first impressions is key) and easily travel the web

I think we visually experience almost everything and in the case of music, more than ever before, and we wanted to leverage this concept – it makes for a much more immersive and interactive music experience, one that is memorable, fun and worthy of being shared.

Have a look at some examples of viinyl sites: http://soultouch.viinyl.com/, http://brothersister.viinyl.com/http://brothersister.viinyl.com/

By: John

John — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:39:34 +0000

Well, maybe the exception that proves the rule is Bing vs. Google. No matter how many great pictures Bing posts on its page, its inferior results to vanilla-plain Google keep it in second place.

By: Martin Soler - wihphotel.com

Martin Soler - wihphotel.com — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:01:19 +0000

I totally agree to this. Emotion sells, not reason. And you don’t make an emotional impact without beauty!