Ugly Design Works?
As disambiguity puts it, ” There has been a whole lot of talk lately about ugly design and the perception that it works.” Sites like Craigslist, myspace, del.icio.us, IMDB and even google and Ebay have been touted as examples of when Ugly Design Works. Don’t believe me? give it a google and see how many MORE articles there are than the ones previously linked. Try anti-marketing design in that search too. One of the examples floating aroung is Plenty of Fish a FREE website that reports AdSense revenue of $10,000 daily. Not a pretty site but I’m sure you would agree that its making money.
How many of the sites you view daily are going out of their way to be pretty? and how many are simply doing everything they can to get the information to you. The Drudge Report comes to mind as an incredibly successful example. The guys over at Design Eye went to great lengths to do a redesign for craigslist, but would their changes make you use it any more (or less)? 
I don’t think I’ll conlude this discussion one way or the other but it certainly seems to be a provacative issue where design and marketing collide. But maybe the conclusion of one comment out there, “Either it works or it doesn’t. If it serves a certain purpose for the brand, by all means use times new roman at 20px, but that doesn’t necessarily work in all situations. At the end of the day it’s how much money you get out of it that counts.” !!!
Images courtesy of disambiguity.com