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My website uses plenty of 3D Text, however my designer says it looks horrible and is old-fashioned "WordArt", and we should opt for 2D Text instead.

Is this true that 3D Text is old-fashioned or horrible?

Personally I think that 3D Text is fine for a gaming website, especially catered to kids.

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  • Your question would be better suited to Graphic Design StackExchange as it's not related to user experience issues. – celinelenoble Oct 10 '18 at 2:03
  • But changing it to 2D wouldn't make any sense if the content is on 3D. Btw, what is the function of that site? – HEWhoDoesn'tKnow Oct 10 '18 at 3:03
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because although graphics is a big part of user experience, as such this question is about whether 3D text is trendy or not. You should ask it in graphicdesign.stackexchange.com Asking about legibility and usage of 3D text in the context of gaming site would be more suitable here. – locationunknown Oct 10 '18 at 5:19
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    Just one man’s opinion: in the 2000’s web design changed from looking cool to being useful. This era of design was called Web 2.0. Most people stopped using the web to be wowed by graphic design and instead used the web to seek information. 3D text looks cool, but 2D text is much more legible and serves the purpose of getting info out as fast as possible – JoJo Oct 10 '18 at 7:22
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Fuzzy Logic - It's Neither True or False.

One mans junk is another man's treasure. What I mean by this is, it's your users that determines if it's good or not.

This is why A/B Testing, aka Split Testing, is so important.

If you run different versions of your design and measure which is most successful, you'll be able to tell from that, how good your designs are.

Personally, I like it. I'm guessing it's for a Minecraft Server? It's very industry specific:

Kids gaming - Very Minecraft or Mario World looking!

But's not to say your users will. They are your target audience and the ones you need to question via your analytics.

Like This:

enter image description here

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When communicating information in a user interface, or indeed any medium, the message should be clear.

The problem with visual effects (such as 3D) is that they can obscure the message you are trying to convey. In your example I would even say that it makes the text less readable.

There is a term "Chart Junk", which refers to excessive use of visual effects in displaying quantitative information. Although this term refers to charts, I think the core message also applies to text.

All ink on the screen / page should be helping to convey the message. Any visual element which is not contributing to this is taking attention away from / obscuring your message.

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If you can render your page using markup and css, then that is the combination that is best for accessibility, responsive design, and search engine optimization.

The use of images in place of markup and css can be worked around with the alt tag, as I'm assuming you do, but that doesn't make it equivalent. Furthermore, your designer is articulating what I have found to be the prevailing opinion amongst designers who work on web projects and software UX in general as exemplified by the principles and implementation of "Flat Design."

Flat design is commonly interpreted as a reactionary movement against 3D, skeuomorphic, and realistic design styles

Regardless of what your business is, this is a website to promote it, and not the business/service itself. If you can't take your designer's advice in regards to actual "design" principles, then why do you have a designer?

I also agree strongly with the the answers provided by Franchesca and Invariant Change.

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    Also fwiw, while I personally enjoy the logo, the use of that font for the menus is distracting and not particularly legible. Most likely it violates accessibility standards that exist for people with certain types of color blindness or foreground/background contrast ratios as exist in the WCAG guidelines. – gview Oct 10 '18 at 14:43

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