Inside Out: How Not to do Error Messages
Writing | (1)
I just tried to buy some tickets to a film as part of Toronto's Inside Out Lesbian & Gay film festival only to be greeted with this message at the top of the page. That's right, there's a message there. Can't see it? No, there's nothing wrong with your eyes, that's actually hot pink text against a red background.
What kills me about this message is that the intent to design something decent was there - it has a couple of the winning elements of a good error message: displayed prominently at the top of the page (after I've clicked the ...