Every designer has a mental list of things to avoid that live rent-free in their head. Things that anyone can easily look past, or see nothing wrong with, but a trained eye knows it’s on the absolute do-not-use list.
So today, I’ve put together a list of 6 of those things for you to stop doing immediately.
1. Stop putting text directly on an image
This one happens often, and it causes two separate problems. First, text baked into an image can’t scale — on a mobile screen, it becomes incredibly tiny because as the image gets smaller, so does the text on it. Second, Google can’t read it. If your headline, tagline, or call to action is sitting inside a JPEG, it’s invisible to search engines and potentially unreadable to your visitors.
Always use real text over your images, with enough contrast to keep it legible.
2. Stop making every button the same color
In web design, hierarchy matters a lot. A “Schedule a Call” button and a “Get to Know Us” button do not carry the same weight, so they shouldn’t look the same either. When every button on your site is the same color and size, you remove all visual hierarchy.
Use colors on your buttons strategically to place proper importance on what actions matter more.
3. Stop letting body copy run full width
This one is easy to ignore. A line of text that spans the full width of a desktop browser (say 1200px or more) is exhausting to read. Studies on readability consistently point to an optimal line length of around 60–80 characters. Beyond that, the eye struggles to find the start of the next line and reading fatigue sets in fast.
Constrain your body copy to a readable width.
4. Stop mixing icon libraries
Icons from different libraries have different stroke weights, corner radii, and visual style. Put a Material Design outline next to a Font Awesome solid icon next to something from Phosphor and the page starts to look like child’s play.
Pick one icon library and stick to it across the entire site.
5. Stop using drop shadows on everything
A well-placed drop shadow adds depth and helps an element lift off the page. But when every card, button, image, and text block has a shadow, the whole design starts to feel heavy and dated.
If you’re considering a shadow, ask whether the element actually needs it, or whether better spacing and contrast would do the same job.
6. Stop adding hover effects to non-interactive elements
If something lifts, grows, or visually changes in some way when you hover it, visitors assume it’s clickable. That’s a trained expectation we’ve grown accustomed to over time. So when a card animates on hover but you can’t actually click it, it’s confusing and misleading.
Save hover effects for things that actually do something. If it can’t be clicked, it doesn’t need it.
Design to Dollars Takeaway
These six things now live rent-free in your head, too (you’re welcome). Once you know what to look for, you’ll spot them everywhere and begin to be more conscious of these design decisions. And when you do, that’s when good design starts to become second nature.
