Clarity trumps design

Jason Fried explains why he prefers simple, text-based web designs to slick interfaces:

None of which is to say that a text-heavy design is the right solution for everyone. But I’ve always found it interesting that some of the most popular sites on the Web–Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, to name a few–are often very heavy on the text and very light on the imagery. These sites won’t win any design awards, but they seem to communicate very clearly to their intended audience.

At the end of the day, you’re designing for your customers, not for other designers.