I believe that good web design has much more to do with the ideas the site is trying to convey than with the actual techniques involved in graphics and coding. I see quite a few sites that make great use of dynamic HTML, fancy animations, mouseovers, Flash animations, and interactivity, but yet are still quite unappealing and ineffective. One of the fundamental ideals to be considered is to always keep your page designs balanced. You should look at your screen as a painter looks at his canvas. Design your page as if you are painting a picture.

With that in mind, how many unbalanced paintings go on to be considered masterpieces? The placement of objects and colors in a great painting are never unbalanced or sloppy. In the same way, you don't want your site to be unbalanced.

Of course, that analogy works only to a point. I used that example to illustrate the importance of arranging your focal points in a manner that is not careless and haphazard. Balance, however, does not mean the same thing in regards to web design that it does in regards to painting. Since the eye reads text from left to right, and is used to finding certain page elements in particular places, balance does not necessarily mean centered. It means that the important elements of the page should flow nicely in a way that the eye naturally follows.

The mistake many designers make is to dismiss all consideration of balance. It's dizzying to look at some of these sites, with a green, left-justified table over here, and an orange, right-justified graphic over there. It seems as if, at times, flashiness can detract from visual appeal. I believe many designers see a neat trick used on another site and want to use it on their own sites - so they import the trick over to their sites without regard for strategic implementation. Rather than having, for instance, a Flash navigation bar that blends with the overall design, and adds to the aesthetic quality of the page, they instead end up with a page that is unbalanced and unprofessional looking. An impressive trick to a web designer will not be impressive to the end user if it distracts from the page's ease of use, or if it is hard on the eye.

Flashiness and new technology should be used strategically, and only when it improves the site and can be blended seamlessly with the overall design. Overuse of these fancy techniques results in a page that looks as if the designer is trying to impress his or her visitors... and when is a visitor truly impressed? Only when the page looks professional, aesthetically pleasing, and is easy to navigate. If you can achieve a balance of both, then by all means, do so. But if you can't, stick with a good, clean, balanced design.