Commit to a Direction
SHOULD: Commit to a design direction (brutalist, editorial, organic) and execute with precision. Avoid generic AI aesthetics: purple gradients, sparkles, excessive border-radius. Polarizing is better than forgettable.
Pick one aesthetic direction and execute it fully instead of hedging toward the safe median
Bad
Good
Why it matters
The failure this catches is not ugliness, it is hedging: a page that borrows a little brutalism, a little soft-pastel SaaS, and a little editorial serif, so that no choice can be blamed and none can be remembered. Choose a direction — brutalist, editorial, organic, technical — and let every element pay into it, including the ones it costs you. Specific anti-patterns (purple, gradients, glass, glow) are not this principle's inventory: they are owned with real detector thresholds by `design-ibelick-no-purple`, `design-ibelick-no-gradients`, `design-impeccable-no-glassmorphism` and `design-impeccable-dark-glow`.
References