In the late 1980s there was a nice study that was produced with the advent of the then nwe-fangled laser printers. It showed that journalists were less likely to read a press release if produced in a neat, attractive sans-serif font, and more likely to read it for news content if produced in slightly distressed Courier.

It is very strange how that works in our minds. You associate sites and immediately discriminate against the content because they look or 'feel' like other sites with less substantial content. For eg. the padding in Google+ gives me a feeling of amateur content (which it is). Same with sans-serif fonts - I got huge push-back at Techcrunch when I wanted to change the default reading font to a serif font, the feedback internally was that the site feels 'too serious'

The business of sites like NYTimes and WSJ make them feel 'authentic' for some reason. I have known this for a long time but couldn't really put my finger on what it was. I remember one of the first client websites I did back in 97 - we laid out absolutely everything that we needed on the page, but there was a lot of space, the client said that the site doesn't feel 'authentic' and I spent a lot of time simply thinking of things to throw onto the page to make it look busier.

I think this is something that a lot of developers and web designers know about, but for some reason I can't recall ever reading anything about it. If anybody knows if this phenomenon has a name or has any more information about it, please share. I have been reading a lot of design books this year and none have made mention of the link between a site being 'busy' and feeling professional