In my recent diatribe about slickness, I hope I made that clear that not all slickness is bad. I just don’t like it when stuff is really showy or self-important, unless it’s tongue-in-cheek. Seth Godin, in his usual clarity and brilliance, blogged about something similar this morning, saying that it’s important to ask if a website design needs to be showy:

If a client comes to you for a web site, the first thing you need to know is:

“Do you want the people visiting this site to notice it?”

He goes on to explain that unless your site is for an artist, musician, entertainer, or something web 2.0 that is in itself fairly flashy and showy, the focus needs to be on the story, not how slick it is. I disagree to a certain extent, since an artist’s story is just as important as the art itself, and essential to understanding the story. (How can you truly appreciate Picasso’s Guernica unless you understand how upset he was about the civil war that ravaged his homeland?)

So I’m coming to the conclusion that slickness is OK, if it supports content. It all goes back to the idea that style without substance is just junk.