• Fried argues that drudge is one of the best designed sites on the web.
• Fried is misinterpreted to say “The drudge report is amazing, it shouldn’t change.” He is comparing it to other sites, not to itself.
• He isn’t saying, also, that sites ought to be ugly instead of pretty. He’s just saying that despite being ugly, drudge is a great design, and I agree.
• Drudge is a great design because it accomplishes exactly what it’s set out to do: Tell you what’s important. It has one main headline, and a straightforward list of subheadlines in no particular order with photos for the important stuff. It’s eminently scannable and difficult to leave without clicking.
• Aesthetics and design are two different things. Aesthetics are a means to an end. They’re an aspect of a design which can be used to great effect to influence people’s perception of the brand/company in question. But practical concerns are just as important.
• It’s easy to confuse the two. Design feedback is so often delivered as “this is beautiful” and rarely as “wow, so usable!”
• The funny thing is, when you embrace the “less is more” pholisophy, what emerges tends to be quite beautiful: see the work of Jason santa maria. It’s hard to imagine each element without its component parts.
• It’s not a tradeoff. Drudge IS hindered by lack of aesthetic quality on the site: for example, how the interface is just as heavy as the content. It’s a testament to Drudge’s phenomenal ability to put cracking news on the homepage that it’s been successful.
• It gets at the curious intersection of engineering and art that is web design. Sometimes, ugly isn’t worth fixing.
• Perhaps unlike art, design cannot be evaluated in a vaccum. it’s not art. A web design is a concerted effort to solve a particular problem: how do I generate a vast and loyal readership, and serve them ads along the way? A design that meets those goals IS a good design. That should be the definition.
• Is drudge the most beautiful site on the web? Of course not. But what would be the point of that