Why Big is In

Or, as Ockham put it:

Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.

I’m starting to view the web much more like more common forms of media these days. I feel the old-school style of webdesign was much like that of a newspaper, with as many words as possible crunched onto a page (in the world of news print this saves money).

Now when I look for inspiration I’ll now turn to magazines or other print media and television, who have been using the “bigger is better” doctrine for as long as I can remember. How often do you see a cluttered ad which is filled with lots of words in small print on TV or in a magazine? Rarely (aside from pooly designed ads).

A little aside: Google “bigger is better” and YourTotalSite.com is the first result.

I agree! I think that the big trend is a nice one.

Maybe consider the fact that most browsers had antialiasing issues with larger fonts just a few years back; that could be part of the reason why we’re only seeing the big-trend in full effect now.

Just my two cents! Great post.

If you’re designing a website aimed at teenagers, you’d better not make the text too small. That’s not because teens have bad eyes, but because teenagers tend to lean back in their chairs when they’re at their computers.

Source: What Websites Do to Turn On Teens

Seems like someone else (besides me) added the quotations to google.com/ig (“Customized Home” page)

Caught with your hand in the cookie jar :)

I must say, I do like the feel and look of the big form elements that I’ve seen recently.

I lean back in my chair, and I am nowhere near being a teenager. But I’ve been leaning for years.

I like some of the big designs. I just don’t like ones that are so big they make me scroll horizontally.

Narrow and big. It’s like reading a book. I love it.

Maybe we’ll get more used to »big« as accessibility concerns (“Barrierefreiheit” in Germany) in web design finally become daily business for designers and users.

For now we might have quite a lot of designers (and clients) thinking that “big” is childish, at least if it’s “big” and “colorful”.

I’m sure they’re wrong… :-)

I think that perhaps, there’s also a reaction among the modern leaders in functional web design to the previous generation of “hip” design sites and web apps, which often favoured minuscule fonts and overly complicated interfaces as a means of showing off.

So interesting. I think that the web is really developing it’s own look (as well as it’s own form of content). So often minimalism is also small in design, clean and big is something rather new to me.

Great Quote by the way.

One other noticeable big is the amount of full screen sites around now. It is a natural progression as screen resolutions and sizes increase. I think it gives a nice variety to the web – although I still like to use both. Least there is the real choice with css now in a more elegant fashion.

While I can see the advantages of this whole ‘big’ thing I do have the feeling that most recent designs that feature it are joining the web 2.0 buzz bandwagon. Sure, big is easier to read, easier to use and all but I really don’t think this is the main reason why so many people start doing it all of a sudden. To me it’s just another design trend just like we’ve had the pixel artwork hype for a while.

I guess those with limited sigh are simply lucky with the current trend because it happens to be easier to read ;)

Big is at least very Buzz Compliant

;)

Garreth, I agree with you that bigger is more eye-catching but do you realize if you have big text/buttons then things would get awfully bigger and perhaps nasty-looking for readers with vision impairment who choose to make text bigger?

In other words, it is sort of balancing act. There are all kinds of users, some of which browsing from hand-held devices.

bad example of big: flock’s home page. TOO big.

i personally can’t wait for the next craze where rotating gifs make a come back – i think i might give up and become a plumber then lol.

I agree with Sam, flock’s homepage is too big in that “you are a stupid user” sort of way. Several sites that utilize larger font sizes are much easier on my eyes. That one just hurts them.

I like the WordPress take on big. It’s friendly, not too over-designed, and easy on the eyes.

I love big text considering my vision is not one of the best,so now everything I buy as far as book are only online which are ebooks, magazines online,Newspapers, tv guides online etc, because in my firefox web browser I can make all text in it as large as I like & all I have to do is press the kets CTRL & +(Control & plus sign) & my text gets big as I want it. So that is why I choose only online media and text because I an make them as big as I like considering my eyes sight is so terrible. I love flash, but I have not came accross a flash site that actually lets you customize your text on the flash page, so I do not use or read flash sites anymore because the text on flash sites tend to be so small I think you need 20/20 vision or superman site inorder to see there text and so far as I am concerned so I buy only my online products from people that have not encased there products inside of sites that I can not make the text bigger and that is usuallt flash sites, so Macromedia wake up, everyone does not have excellent site(Duh).

The ironic thing about Flash is it has built-in scaling but it is disabled by everyone using it in fixed-sized boxes!

I too lean back in my chair to read, in fact, I use many positions rather than any single one as I think it is more healthy – OK maybe I should get up and walk around more…

Anyway BIG trend, good thing as it embraces the plain fact that there’s many different system configurations and user preferences, right now it’s our turn to get what we want – BIG.

However, I feel CLARITY should be celebrated more, and SENSIBLE-Flexibility needs our focus. Also I think when the initial craze is over, BIG will subside and JUST-RIGHT will take over. It’s a Goldilocks thing!

BIG is deffinatly a part of the web 2.0 craze at the moment which I agree is a good thing.

Flash is being disliked quite heavily lately but I feel flash will play a large part in the next gen web sites. I agree most flash websites out their have not been designed around the “big is better” rule and are generally to clutered with pointless animations, just because they can. But if some flash designers take a look at designing based on simplicity you could see flash sites out there being more functional and accessable then many web 2.0 sites.