Every graphic designer who has ever put together a webpage knows how to do a lot of things that they will never do, simply because they have a lot more sense than that. After all, we are all well aware of how to create a bright orange page with bright blue letters an inch tall, with a song playing in the background and a huge monstrosity for a cursor. The good news is, almost nobody ever goes “full bore” insane like that. If you did at some point, either because you were new or if alcohol was involved, it’s all right. Hopefully nobody will ever be able to match it up to you.
The point is, this is not the early 90s, when anything went. Nowadays, we have a mature Internet and even your trusty direct star tv connection, and there is not much of a place for crazy things like that. Subtlety is the name of the game, these days. After all, who could possibly take you (or your customers) seriously if the sites you built looked like they had been put together by a crazy person? It is a lot like the difference between saying things in a polite, casual tone of “indoor” voice, versus shouting everything you say while waving your arms like a raving lunatic. It might work for little children, but there is not much place for that in the adult world.
Consider how ugly the net would look if everybody just randomly unleashed the full power of their creative “muse.” While a few truly gifted web designers could forge a lot of beauty out of even the craziest and gaudiest things, most of us do not have that level of finesse. This is why most websites have white backgrounds with black text, and if there is a background image it is saturated to the point of being nearly white itself. Subtle things look great, because you have to focus on them. Good websites do not bludgeon people.