We’re all learning better practices in web design, and that’s a good thing. But designing a website isn’t a simple recipe, and while it’s important to make a website useful, they don’t have to all look the same.Things are placed where they are because they make sense, and the user has expectations based on using other websites. That’s not a bad thing, but in order to create memorable websites, we need to look at the actual content and design consciously.But it’s not just WHERE things are, it’s also WHAT they look like: Web 2.0 elements such as subtle drop shadows and gradients are rampant. Sure, the web is looking much nicer than it did a few years ago, but at the same time, websites have increasingly following the same patterns.

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