It takes time to make great pages. Sometimes it's worth it; sometimes it's not. However, if you want to create a high-quality web, be prepared to spend lots of time doing thinking that seems very unproductive.
A while ago, I had to construct a forwarding page for a client whose web had moved. The client had an original forwarding page which I wanted to improve. My immediate instinct was to just clean up the colours (get rid of the grey background). That's really all that was required. However, I realized that I'd probably have to do many more forwarding pages in the future so I decided to spend some time on the problem so as to come up with a more interesting forwarding page.
I thought that the page would look good if I had a single graphic on it that would convey the concept of moving on. I started looking through the Corel Gallery clip art library book. I looked at trucks and planes and all sorts of moving things, but none of them seemed right. So I started looking at random clip art in the book to see if I'd get any ideas. I'd taken nearly an hour over all this and was about to give up, when suddenly one image leapt off the page. It was just perfect! You can see my solution in the second page below, but please look at the original first.
These two pages perfectly illustrate the difference between good
and great. Good is worthy and functional. Great is inspired. The difference
may be a single idea.
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