I have a theory as to one of the leading causes of this blight - screens on Macbooks show text in a way that gives more contrast than screens on most devices. Other devices vary obviously, but Apple tends to be quite far at one end of the spectrum (to my eye).
Designers obviously love their Macs, and while using them produce a design that is at the borderline of what's ok on their screen and then is unusable on lots of others.
I have a big, bright, high contrast monitor and good eyesight (in theory the best case), but it's connected to a Windows PC and various websites render as hard to read. At least I'm savvy and so can use StyleBot to fix the worst offenders!
Every designer should be aware of the difference between what they see on their monitor and how their final product will appear.
In college, I helped design part of my student newspaper. Images that looked beautiful and had perfect contrast levels rarely survived the shitty printer that darkened everything.
It's weird to think about, but designers should never put all their trust in what's on their screen.
This is obvious when your Macbook'd up designers demo something on a crappy projector, without having tested it there first. Entire areas of the design just... disappear.
Designers obviously love their Macs, and while using them produce a design that is at the borderline of what's ok on their screen and then is unusable on lots of others.
I have a big, bright, high contrast monitor and good eyesight (in theory the best case), but it's connected to a Windows PC and various websites render as hard to read. At least I'm savvy and so can use StyleBot to fix the worst offenders!