Three principles of design:

• Keep it simple, but elegant
• Form follows function/Content before candy
• Be mindful of established standards

A complicated design confuses users. While it's certainly not an excuse for ugly design, a site that is difficult to navigate will turn off more users than an ugly site. Case in point: no one has ever praised Yahoo! or Google for their beauty, yet both remain highly popular because they serve their customers well. Display of complex data need not be complicated. Clean and sensible design can actually make complex data easy for the user to understand.

Eye candy is distracting, and tedious, especially when used in navigation. Users are not interested in waiting for navigational elements to assemble themselves. Nor are they interested in chasing after menus that move around. There is a reason that most Flash based "splash" pages have a link that says "skip intro" - because most people don't watch them. Additionally, in todays cash-tight market, eliminating non-essential flashiness can lower your costs from design to implementation to bandwidth.

Following standards can drastically reduce development time, particularly when coupled with the first two Principles. By eliminating the need for complex and omnipresent browser checks and/or unrealistic browser requirements, we gain three very important things: drastically reduced development time, greater cross-browser compatibility, and a wider potential audience.