Clarity beats cleverness
The most persuasive design decision is usually the one nobody notices — and the discipline is saying no to the one they would.
Every project reaches a moment where a clever idea knocks on the door. A navigation that unfolds like origami. A scroll effect nobody has seen. A headline set in a typeface that needs explaining. The idea is genuinely good — that is what makes it dangerous.
Clever asks the visitor to admire the design. Clear asks them to understand the offer. Those are different jobs, and only one of them pays the client.
The test I use
Before anything ships, I ask one question of every surface: if a stranger saw this for four seconds, what would they repeat back? If the answer is a feeling about the design rather than a sentence about the product, the surface fails — however beautiful it is.
Clever is a tax the visitor pays. Clarity is a tax the designer pays.
Paying that tax means rewriting the headline six times, cutting the second animation, and choosing the typeface that disappears. The work looks easier than it was. That is the point.
Where cleverness belongs
One place: the moment after comprehension. Once the visitor knows what this is and what to do, a single considered surprise — a hover, a line of copy, an image crop — makes the whole thing memorable. Clever is the dessert. It is never the meal.