As designers, we pay a lot of attention to how something looks and rightly so. If things created by us don't look good, we have lost our purpose of existence. I mean if we are creating ordinary stuff that anyone can produce, why would someone want a graphics designer. While it is a healthy pursuit, sometimes we fail to look beyond the immediate need of making something beautiful and by doing that we are doing more harm than good.

We need to understand that we are not artists who are creating a work of art to be appreciated by a handful of our peers or select patrons. We are communicators who are trying to communicate on behalf of our client. Communication design is more like a language and it needs to be treated like that, our purpose is to convey a message, enhance its appeal and not to work like a make-up artist.

A good example of what I as saying are my two blogs-Mental Floss and Picturejockey. Every once in a while I get a mail from someone saying how beautiful my site is. The purpose of my site is not to look beautiful, but to convey a message (like this one) and though a good and inviting layout is an advantage, it is not a guaranteed method of generating interest among the readers. If someone has come to my site, they have seen the design, they like navigating it, they click a few links, admire it and shoot out a mail to me “Wow, your site is really great” but I can bet that those people will not return to my site unless they like the content too. They will not return over and over again to admire the design of my site but they definitely will return for new content if they get hooked to it.

Putting your best foot forward holds true and a decent design on my site has done exactly that by inviting people to come and explore it but they will do so only once and if they don't like what I offer on the site, they will not return. So while being a designer has helped in generating a positive first response, it has not helped in inflating the traffic to my site. The number of people coming to my site is the same as it would have been with a little average layout.

When we do something, we get so engrossed in the visual consistence that we fail to see that there are a lot inconsistencies and blemishes in our design that the people will be willing to ignore and overlook if they are happy with what we are communicating. What matters more is what we say and not so much how we say it.