It's because people are so goddamn awful at design.
There's so much bullshit in the average design calculated to leech a few more clicks out of people. Archive trees on the side, tag clouds, lots and lots of numbers calculating I-don't-give-a-fuck, share buttons. People stick colors and borders where colors and borders have no reason being. On top of that, people have no clue how to make readable typography. None. I'm shocked at how many people go along with ugly text without once learning to make it attractive. Good designers, too, that just never thought to look at making their text fit into their page.
When you have ugly layouts, people won't tolerate reading as much, and you learn that your "best" writing is much shorter. There're some exceptions. I don't think it's surprising that the best longform writers I know all have very attractive-looking longform designs. Certainly that's what I put effort into this week, designing my new portfolio.
I sometimes feel autistic online, because I don't understand how people come up with the need to clutter the way they do. When I design, I start feeling cramped if I've got more than seven distinct stylistic elements. My portfolio includes a header and a footer, and looking at it a a part of me still feels like that's too much to have on a web site.
There's so much bullshit in the average design calculated to leech a few more clicks out of people. Archive trees on the side, tag clouds, lots and lots of numbers calculating I-don't-give-a-fuck, share buttons. People stick colors and borders where colors and borders have no reason being. On top of that, people have no clue how to make readable typography. None. I'm shocked at how many people go along with ugly text without once learning to make it attractive. Good designers, too, that just never thought to look at making their text fit into their page.
When you have ugly layouts, people won't tolerate reading as much, and you learn that your "best" writing is much shorter. There're some exceptions. I don't think it's surprising that the best longform writers I know all have very attractive-looking longform designs. Certainly that's what I put effort into this week, designing my new portfolio.