Ugly Stylesheets as a Design Tool

We are going to try adding obnoxious ugly CSS styling property values to our stock of templates. The arguement for it is to create an explicit check list of design elements to consider. In the words of Hillman Curtis we are

"making the invisible visible."

As a design tool, this ugly stylesheet will help remind us of all the things we should consider in each design application. The base argument is as follows: the more relevant issues you consider as part of your design process, the more refined the product will be. Another way to consider this technique is to define a state of high craft as being a level of consideration or completion in which all extraneous and or distracting information is removed. So, our ugly style sheet is creating the distraction as a series of reminders to consider all the big issues and little details, as a means to arriving at a high state of craft and resolution.

Some HTML elements to consider styling in a dramatically unappealing manner:
div, p, h1-h6, blockquote, address, hr, ol, ul, dl, li, dt, dd, abbr, acronym, cite, dfn, q, strong, em, and all elements with class or id attributes

Some CSS properties to consider styling with dramatically unappealing values: