Oh jesus, my site got submitted and is #1 on HN again. It kind of amazes me that a guide that begins with a Thich Nhat Hanh (buddhist monk) quote can bring out such heated debate.

A few things to clarify:

* The before/after flyers were taken from real life. These were printed out and tacked up to community boards and the like.

* One reason why I think the right poster is better is that it looks nicer on the surface and would therefore be more enticing for people to read to find the details. I think the left poster looks like it would be harder to find information. If an ad looks hard to decipher, then people aren't even going to bother. A lot of criticism here has to do with how the phone number doesn't stand out. If you're walking down the street and just see a giant phone number scrawled on a wall, would you call it? No. You need to have a reason to call it. I think that the flyer on the left gives passersby less reason to call.

* That said, I do need better examples, and the site needs to look less ugly. As it happens, my next project after finishing http://braveclojure.com is to revamp this site. If you're interested in hearing about the revamp, please sign up for an email reminder: http://eepurl.com/biiMZT . I'm going to add more content on actually implementing this stuff using CSS/SCSS. If you think the Clojure site is OK looking then you'll probably like the new visual mess content.

* For some reason, beginners seem to love this site as it is. Weird!!!

edit: If you have little or no experience trying to do visual design, I hope the site has encouraged you to give it a try, if only so that you can do better than I did :)

edit 2: Back in 2011 I wrote a blog post thanking readers, looks like it's relevant again: http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/design/cuym-thank-you/