Alex Hyett

Posted on Sep 25 Originally published at alexhyett.com on Aug 2

Uniqueness is the key to standing out

#ai #design

The other day I saw this post about "Stolen Buttons". It is a browser extension that "steals" a button from every website that you visit. You can see the creators collection of "stolen" buttons here: Stolen Buttons | Anatoly Zenkov

If you scroll through the list there will likely be a few that catch your eye, as they are a little bit different. It might be the shape, the colour, or the font used that makes them stand out.

The majority of the buttons though are flat and pill shaped. They are usually blue or purple.

A lot of this is due to the prevalence of CSS and UI frameworks like Tailwind and Bootstrap over the last decade. These frameworks have made it a lot easier for developers to put together websites and UI designs but without additional customisation everything starts looking the same.

I must admit I am guilty of this as well. Over the years, a lot of the personality and uniqueness has slowly been removed from my personal site which is a shame.

I remember one of the websites I made as a teenager had a negative (blue) image of my hand that morphed into tentacles. I had another that featured a 3D person that I made in blender that pointed to the various links when you hovered over them. My website now is a lot more generic and probably not that memorable for people who visit it.

With people increasingly using AI for website design, we see this problem keep coming up again. Instead of Bootstrap or Tailwind websites, we have Claude websites.

Claude has a very distinctive style which wasn't that common before AI coding became prevalent. You can see some examples here:

Websites generated with AI will typically have:

Inter + JetBrains Mono font
Blinking Dot
Cards with a coloured border on the left
Overuse of gradients

There is a vibe coded guide on how LLMs work that shows a lot of these patterns: How LLMs Work — A Visual Deep Dive

Of course there have been attempts to come up with AI skills to make your designs better. They do this by removing a lot of these AI tells and give the models more input into how to style the websites.

All you need to do to achieve a unique website is to download some markdown files used by thousands of other developers.

In case you missed my obvious sarcasm, I am not suggesting you do this.

The web used to be a varied unique place with every website looking a little bit different. Some of this is still prevalent in the IndieWeb but even there many people are using Bear Blog which makes all their websites look the same.

The uniqueness comes from people adding their own unique styles and personalities into their designs. They may not be perfect but at least they are different.

The more we get bombarded with AI slop the better we are at filtering it out. The same happened with adverts. As the web filled up with ads we got better at ignoring them. I couldn't tell you what the last ad I watched was about as my brain just ignored it.

I plan to add some more uniqueness to my website such hand drawn elements and different styles.

Here are some good examples to inspire you:

❤️ Picks of the Week #

🛠️ Tools #

Choosing a Public DNS Resolver - I use Pi-Hole with a custom block list but I fallback to a standard DNS for everything else. There is a good list of DNS servers you can use here whether you have a Pi-hole or not to give you a bit more protection.

💻 Programming #

Publishing My Eleventy Blog to the ATmosphere with Standard.site - I haven't gone down the Standard.site route yet but this is a great guide if you wanted to.

Learning to code is still worthwhile - In addition to this, the people saying AI is great are those that already know how to code and can steer or correct it's mistakes.

🔒 Security & Privacy #

Instagram is incorporating users' photos in ads for Meta Glasses - Everything about Meta's Glasses are gross. At least the group "Everyone Hates Elon" is trying to educate people.

🏢 Tech Industry #

PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts - I have only ever bought one movie digitally only because it was the same price as renting it. My kids really wanted to watch the animated Grinch at Xmas one year. All the other movies I own are on Blu-ray and DVD, good luck deleting those.

The case for physical media ownership - Still not sure about buying physical media? There are a lot of good reasons why you should here. I must admit I am a bit nervous about all the Steam games I own. I really need to back them up and see if they can be played offline.

What happened to the fight for the Internet? - I think a lot of this is the fact that for many people under say 35, don't remember what the internet used to be like. All they know is the 5 big corporations.

🤖 AI #

AI and greener choices - I am going to do a post on all the pros and cons of AI because I don't think there is enough information in one place for people to make an informed decision. If you do want to use AI then you need to be conscious of it's environmental impact.

The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams - What makes art, writing and all other forms of expression useful is the persons unique experiences that go into it.

What Should We Optimize Away? - I also enjoy programming and learning new skills. If it isn't giving us time back then what is the point?

Small AI Models Gain Traction In places with unreliable networks - I am hoping these large paywalled models will seem ridiculous in the future and everyone will just use small efficient models that are designed for the job.

🧠 Miscellaneous #

The bottleneck might be the air in the room - I have a CO2 sensor in my office. When I am not in there it sits around 400 - 500 ppm. If I am in there with the door shut however it can go up to above 1,500 ppm. I definitely notice the difference in my concentration levels.

💬 Quote of the Week #

Most people are just trying to get through the day. Here's what I want you to commit to — learn to get something valuable from each day. Don't just get through it-absorb something from it. Learn from it. Let the day teach you. Join the university of life. What a difference that will make in your future. Commit yourself to learning; commit yourself to absorbing; be like a sponge. Get whatever you can from each day. Don't miss any opportunity to learn

From the book The Art of Exceptional Living by Jim Rohn.

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