This month I decided to have a look at the websites of some of the design community to see what they had to contribute to the design of websites. I have not picked one out to review but have come to some general conclusions – one being that there is a fine line between innovation and irritation.

I understand designers want to use their websites not just to say they are innovative and creative but to demonstrate it. After all, design is about achieving objectives. Sometimes, though, I suspect they also want to show just how damn clever they are. Some seem to forget that busy clients will want to navigate those websites quickly and without too much fuss. The easiest way for them to do that is for the site to be clear and have a certain level of familiarity.

I am a keen advocate of the old marketing adage: Keep it Simple, Stupid. KISS. By and large, simplicity equates to transparency and transparency to honesty. When it comes to websites, simplicity usually also means the site is easy to use – yet most of us surfing the web start off irritated at the length of time it takes to reach the useful bit of information we want.

Some in the design fraternity seem to feel the need to make their websites as unfathomable as possible. But how clever is it to start by annoying a client who wants to carry out some basic background research before approaching them?

Many seem to delight in starting the irritation as soon as possible by hiding the way into their websites. It is never terribly difficult to find the way in – just keep clicking on everything that moves. And usually a lot does move. Pictures scroll. Icons dart around. Sometimes music plays. Oh, please!

Take the Grimshaw Architects website (www.grimshaw-architects.com). When you enter their address into your browser the opening page gives you the addresses of their offices in England, the USA and Australia and a map of the world gives the meridians on which their offices sit.

While the page is opening the site tries to put a pop-up on to your desktop, which is your entry to the rest of the website. As many surfers will have put a stop on pop-ups this is not altogether a good ploy. A message warning that the pop-up has been blocked might even send some surfers scuttling off to another site in fear of attack.

You can enter the site by clicking on the ‘launch website’ button anyway, although the website still appears on a pop-up, where floating (ie they move around) grey squares take you to the various pages of the site. Most of the grey squares are blank until you put your cursor on them so you cannot see the whole menu at once. Architects and designers seem keen on hiding information, perhaps to keep the palette clean and not spoil all that creative use of empty space.

The Grimshaw solution is no worse than having drop down menus. In a lot of ways it is considerably better. It is more innovative. More interesting. But the site had lost me with the first attempted pop-up.

One site I liked was David Chipperfield’s (www.davidchipperfield.co.uk). It is clean. Simple. Has good use of white space. Menus are easy to follow. Nothing moves unnecessarily. After a trawl through a dozen or so other sites of architects and designers it was like leaving the sensory overdrive of an overstocked art gallery and emerging into a sunny open air square of York stone paving and Irish Blue limestone street furniture.

But maybe that’s just me.