Arrows Suck or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Raquo

As a designer, who is well versed in site production, I come across the freakshow that is Photoshop and it's filters on a daily basis. Come one, Come all, see the Bearded Lady, Wolfman, and vector shapes with confounding gradients, drop shadows and bevel like you've never experienced!

The target of this rant is a usual suspect: the arrow. It seems to be a frequent design choice. A solid triangle with a myriad of filters applied haphazardly and expected to be reproduced with precision across the browser landscape, and conform to the standards of the lowest common denominator (IE6 at the moment).

I'm politely asking the rest of the world's designers to put down the crazy glue and start designing with the browser and user experience in mind. After years of painstaking vertical alignment I've made friends with the silent but cool kid on the design playground, the raquo.

I know what you're thinking... It's so plain! Just one color? What about drop shadows? Where is the bevel? ... It's ok, I was scared too. But it turns out, people actually still click links labeled "Read More" with a raquo standing by it's side.