I can’t explain why exactly, but I am fascinated by a pair of truly horrendous web pages I ran across in the last week.

• Opening Page is a screeching roll of outrageous claims of wealth that will befall whoever buys the domain openingpage.com. He can’t really believe this stuff, can he?
• I think HavenWorks is trying to be a helpful news site, but with the oops-wrong-palette color scheme, rows of tiny photos with blue link borders, and razor-thin columns running down the page, it’s a usability nightmare, a case study in all the ways not to make a web page.

When I was growing up in New York City, Carvel ice cream had commercials on TV with Tom Carvel himself doing the narration. These commercials stood out even to children as having remarkably low production values. The theory at the time was that it was done intentionally to make an impression. Are we seeing the same tactic with these web sites? Or am I reading too much into it, and these are simply horribly designed?

In the case of HavenWorks, the owner seems proud of his distinction, since at the bottom of the page is this notice:

!-! Nominated for Most Poorly Designed Website in the World by Digg.com

and he even has a page of his other designs.