Julien Vallée is a graphic designer and art director from Montréal, Canada.

One of Julien’s favorite materials to use in his artwork and design is paper, hand-crafting it to create unique one of a kind pieces.

He has worked for some important clients, including the likes of MTV, The New York Times Magazine and Computer Arts Magazine.

On top of these amazing achievements, Julien has been featured in countless publications all over the world, and has also held exhibitions of his work in various countries.

If you like the work you see here, be sure to check out more of Julien Vallée’s work at his portfolio, and follow him on Twitter.

Over the years, web designs and layouts have increased in complexity. Yet, while our work becomes ever more polished and interactive, moving away from the static boxy layouts that dominated the ’90s, the central goal has not changed.

Visibility is as important to designers today as ever. It’s about our ability to focus the user’s attention on the meaningful content that helps to sell goods and encourage subscribers, and it helps websites gain regular readers.

With people increasingly taking advantage of pre-built solutions, giving websites just enough distinction and personality to cultivate user interest is important.

After all, the whole point of a website is to be unique, not to follow others or to offer a usable yet generic and lifeless layout. With this in mind, let’s examine how the compulsion to overuse certain design conventions and patterns could favorably or adversely affect users.

Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD.

The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers.

These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today.

So for a few moments, take a break from your daily routine, have a laugh and enjoy these funny cartoons.

Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below as well as any related stories of your own…

Web designers and developers sacrifice countless hours and sleep sorting out clients’ objectives, audiences’ needs, brand continuity, page layouts, information architecture, navigation, functionality, cross-browser compatibility, accessibility — the list goes on. And then the web copy finally arrives.

If the content is good, it conveys the right messages, and helps boost online presence, traffic and conversion rates.

The client gets an attractive ROI, the designer is labeled a hero, and referrals flow.

If the content misses the mark, it can damage or even destroy the website, and all that time and effort (not to mention credibility) goes down the toilet.

So here’s an outline of common web copy culprits that kill websites, and how to spot and avoid them.