I’m a graphic and web designer by trade (among other things) and one of the main questions that my clients often ask me is whether they should use a lot of graphics on their website. My answer usually varies from person to person, but generally my theory is similar. If you want your website to look like it was made in the 90’s then feel free to use a lot of graphics.

There are some websites that look really nice with high end graphics, background images, flash banners, the works, etc, but, these websites generally do not benefit directly from their high end interfaces. For example, one of my favorite “Web 2.0″ designs is the Skype layout. It has some images in the middle, but really the layout does not rely in the overuse of images. If you browse from page to page you will notice images are used as supplements to the CSS. The site makes very good use of colors and fonts to create a soft and welcoming feel.

I think images should add to your website, not BE your website. Images increase page load times as well as bandwidth. I think it’s definitely worth it to have some images, but not if a similar look of effect can be achieved with CSS.

Now FLASH is something entirely different. Flash is something that can look really nice, but until browsers include Flash support by default I will not recommend it for major use at all on a site. By this I mean I would never suggest using flash for any area of your design that is necessary for your site to function, such as navigation menus (although they can look neat in flash), page headers (unless you have a default image for non flash users), and of course I would NEVER recommend creating your entire website in flash. This isn’t so much a flash support issue as it is an SEO issue. Search engines simply do not index flash. It’s not currently possible. It may look nice, but if you are a serious webmaster out to profit from the web, flash can quickly become your “forbidden fruit”. It looks so nice but really it can cause more harm than good.

In closing, simple is best. Stay away from overdoing fancy graphics. Web 2.0 is all about  making the internet easy to use. People want results at the click of a button, not after waiting for images to load or music videos to play.