Updated, newest submission to oldest...
***********************************************************************
Week 5 – Part 1: Put on a Panto
Put on a Panto is a site designed to help families put on their own pantomimes at home. As I went through the entertaining animation and clever script (the emcee’s descriptions of the pantomime stories is pretty comical), I was wondering why would someone design such a great website for the sole purpose of bringing the art of pantomime into the home? Where in the world is the dearth of pantomime a marketable commodity? Turns out, England, and get this, it’s sponsored by Robinsons – “the nation’s favorite squash.” Gawd, I love the British. Anyway, the design is so engaging and well done, it’s a blast to go through. Now, if I could just get a hold of some of that squash…
Flash Templates: A site that sells ready-made templates for Flash websites.
mauricostudio.com: Really awesome portfolio site for Mauricio Guimaraes, web designer and illustrator.
Edwin Murat Ganter: Another portfolio site that's pretty rad. It's so cool to see what can be done on these portfolios, but also daunting, like, "I'm never gonna be able to do that..."
Theologos House of Jewelry: Beautiful site using orchids as the navigational tools. Not for those who'd like to quickly shop for jewelry. Definite feel of "Relax... enjoy yourself... we've got all the time in the world to make the right purchase."
***********************************************************************
Week 4 – Part 2: The Oleg
Ukranian freelancer designer Oleg Kostyuk, has a visually compelling site, mixed with goofy and somewhat endearing elements. Take his My World page; by letting your mouse rest on certain objects in the scene for a second or two, personal facts about Oleg pop up. For instance, he likes to visit the gym from time to time to “be in good fit,” he pays homage to his favorite actor and movie by including a scene from Forrest Gump, and he’s got his World of Warcraft characters lounging in a meadow, with the evil city Kiev located in the background. He makes a game out of finding all the pop ups, I never did locate number 3.
I also got stuck on the How It’s Made page, where you can watch the transformation of a piece from start to finish. It’s a really beautiful site, and while I snickered at the English, I also wished he would have put his WoW server info on the site; I’d drop by Ironforge and say “Nice job, Oleg! Wanna duel?”
Other sites visited and enjoyed:
1020 Trickery Lane: A unique way to present an online clothing catalog.
Mimmo Jodice: Italian photographer’s site. A little clunky to move around in, but clean design.
Jongmin Kim: A web whiz’s portfolio. It’s so cool, I wanna be her friend.
istock Flash stock: A page with a bunch of stock Flash footage.
***********************************************************************
Week 4 – Part 1: [adult swim] Games
Went poking around [adult swim] Games for some much needed distraction. [adult swim] offers loads of Flash games, all of the tongue-in-cheek persuasion. Zombie Hooker Nightmare was a favorite although I never did successfully turn a trick. Robot Unicorn ATTACK matches a super cheese soundtrack up with a unicorn sprinting gracefully through the sky, until, inevitably, it misses the next floating meteor of safety, plummeting the magnificent, single-horned steed to a fiery death. Jet Pack Jackass was my favorite title, mostly ‘cause the word jackass makes me chuckle.
All-in-all, the games were kind of amusing, but didn’t grab me by my online gaming addiction. I think I’ll go back to Poppit, and leave the zombie prostituting to others.
Other sites visited with mixed results:
GTI Project: Interactive site for the Volkswagen GTI. Take a toy car test drive!
Sony Japan – Cam with me: A series of scenes from an Asian girl’s life, from toddler on up. The viewer can choose parts of scenes to create their own movie of her life. It’s pretty cool technology, but why I’d want to make a movie of some chick’s life I don’t even know escapes me.
Martin Anderle: A Danish designer’s website. Found the sperm look simultaneously distracting and humorous. The Piss Game is hilarious!
Allen Design Group: Well done design from a marketing agency in England. They’ve placed real people in a cardboard office, very engaging.
***********************************************************************
Week 3 – Part 2: “The Gradual Disappearance of Flash Websites,” Smashing Magazine, April 12, 2010
I came across a Smashing Magazine article today, regarding the raging debate on the future of Flash. Of course, I’ve heard the Apple announcement not to support Flash apps in its iPhones and iPads (another reason Apple irritates the hell out of me), and the general debates over Flash vs. the rest of the internet that designers and tech folks enjoy frothing over, but I don’t completely grasp the issue so I took the time to peruse the article, and came out the backend with a little more understanding of the concerns. In summation: CSS3 and HTML5 provide more accessibility to a great deal more internet users, and their technology has increased to match (or closely match – this, judging by the comments to the article, is a much debated turn of phrase) Flash’s media-rich experience. So, Flash will retain it’s footing in the industry for a limited time, or, as is more likely the case with Adobe, it will morph to provide an equal range of accessibility to users.
I would bank that Adobe has sunk too much in to Flash to let it die a peaceful death, and will scurry to make it as competitive in the future. But, maybe someday, we'll be looking at old Flash pieces like we now gaze at Harryhausen stop-animation; nostalgic for the days when skellies and Argonauts beat the hell out of each other, scaring the piss out of our 6-year old selves.
Standards-based websites visited:
Pigeon & Pigeonette: A site promoting a children’s book. Much like a project shown in class from the Born Magazine site, this one appears to have one large image that zooms around during navigation.
Creative People: Never been to a Russian site before. The agency's graphic on the home page is very stylin’ and while I didn’t understand what the content was, it’s all beautifully presented.
Experimental web standards sites visited:
Leaf Transform: A leaf falling through a forest, and then falling some more, and then falling yet again.
Canvas Animation Demo: A rather goofy explanation of animating on a canvas.
***********************************************************************
WEEK 3 - PART 1: John Lester
“Why should I choose John Lester as my eMentor?” Hang on, John’s gonna take about 5 minutes and 20 Flash pages to tell you why.
I guess when your last name rhymes with molester you’re coming out of the gate with not much to lose. Mr. Lester starts strong on his bid for worst website ever with the courageous musical choice of a children’s choir cheerily singing over big-fonted, red and yellow text that obviously means business… the business of mentoring YOU! He continues on boldly, with ever-so-not persuasive peer endorsements, a list of personal and business achievements, and tops it all off with a change-up in the music; the gentle strains of the Rocky theme accompanied by the stunning visual of a gold box wildly orbiting a gold globe. Why, you ask? Because children’s voices, big text, gold worlds and boxes, and the theme to Rocky just screams: TWO TICKETS TO DESTINY! ALL ABOARD THE JOHN TRAIN!
Given that most of John’s accomplishments are sitting in the late 90’s, I’m guessing the site was designed around then. I, too, was around then, and have a hard time believing this design was ever a grand idea. We weren’t that desperate for content. (Or were we… truthfully, the decade didn’t seem worth staying sober for, it’s all a Netscape-ist blur.)
Other sites visited and enjoyed for their absurdity of design and/or content:
Data Just Data, Inc.: Not just Flash, but lots of flashing. Most noteworthy, Data Just Data, actually, just actually misspells database in the opening splash page. Rock. On.
Senior Adult Music: “Bob and Joyce bring back the songs that touched your heart.” I hope that means Danzig! Sadly, only the Intro Page would load; I would have enjoyed learning more about Bob and Joyce.
Haiti News Network: Well, I skipped finding out what the news is in Haiti ‘cause frankly, I was afraid of clicking through on any one of their content links. Yipes!
Trinity Broadcasting Network: Too purple. Too stupid. Plus, I hate them.
***********************************************************************
WEEK 2 – PART 2: RockinFlash
In an effort not to peruse the same lists of outstanding Flash websites as last week, I typed “rocking flash” into my Google search. At the top of the list was a site actually called RockinFlash. “How fortuitous,” I thought (mostly ‘cause I just like the way the phrase sounds in my head), and clicked through to see if the moniker of the site was simply audacious boasting, or if they really had some rocking Flash going on. Hmmmm. Mainly audacious boasting, there’s much more rocking sites out there. However, he (Mark Lovell, Mr. RockinFlash) did have quite an assortment of interesting e-cards, a marketing tool previously unknown to me. His portfolio consists of mostly performing arts groups, and isn’t crazy-original, but they’re well-done promotional pieces and I dug going through the list. Austin Lyric Opera’s Waiting for the Barbarians was a favorite, black background with white-line animation. Nice.
Other sites visited and enjoyed:
Zombieland: Just watched the movie last night, and they did such an outstanding job with additional visuals in the production I thought maybe they’d have a “rocking” bit of Flash on the website. Not so much. Still, an awesome movie!
Dave Werner/OkayDave: A portfolio that incorporates all kinds of multimedia. Pretty snazzy.
designsul: I have no idea what this is promoting as it’s a Portugal site and I don’t read Portugese, but I’ve never seen milk cartons look so damn interesting.
WMTeam: Opens with an animated singing, dancing construction worker. Big finish, with jazz hands!
********************************************************************************
WEEK 2 - PART 1: Franck Sorbier
Franck Sorbier is a fashion designer of the French persuasion, but boasts the parentage of the Roman god Janus. In keeping with his father’s side of the family, the website is a heap of Roman/gothic imagery; towering columns framing a massive wheel; black, rich browns, and ivory tones on display. It’s like something Batman might have lived in had he been Caeser. The design never loses sight of the theme, it’s consistent throughout, and the audio adds greatly to the tone also. It is, however, a lot of Flash, moving somewhat jerkily through the pages, and I have a computer built for gaming graphics. I imagine they lose visitors whose computers are having a hard time processing all that information. I also found the text on the introduction page difficult to read, so I never found out exactly how he came to discover his illustrious parentage, I gave up after Ulysses and the mermaids (plus, I thought it was kinda silly).
Cool clothes though. I bet they cost a pretty aureus.
Other sites visited and enjoyed:
The Shins and Band of Horses: More fun from the Royal Magnet Design Co (see White Stripes below).
EcodaZoo: Very fun!
MCBD: London based creative agency that chose one of my favorite color schemes, yellow, black and white, to make an eye-catching webpage.
********************************************************************************
WEEK 1: The White Stripes
Jesus, is there nothing Jack White can't conceive and create brilliantly? I suspect on days when the begetter of The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, and The Dead Weather is not able to invoke his own genius, he covers masterfully by hiring other geniuses to ensure every aspect of his product is dazzling. The White Stripes website is a perfect example; there’s no way the man is also a great website designer, but he must be savvy enough to hire those who can execute a beautiful and easy-to-navigate website.
From the opening splash page with a goldfish, pulsing eerily red and floating belly-up in a sea of black, to the bold black, white and red images on the home page, with “Conquest” aptly blasting through the speakers, it’s the epitome of slick, and effectively pulls a viewer into exploring additional content. The navigational bar, populated with symbols that flip upon rollover to page names, is fast to locate on each page. It’s a lot of fun to view the individual pages to see what oddity of design will be incorporated, for instance, penguins falling out of the sky on the Links page to rest on a Roman general’s marble shoulders.
The site design is by Rob Jones of AnimalRummy.com and Royal Magnet Design Co. I’m sure Jack White has his fingerprints all over the finished piece too.
Other sites visited and enjoyed:
The CLUE Virtual Mansion: Play the game of CLUE online. I didn't win.
Them Crooked Vultures: A splash page with a simple, but cool opening graphic, somewhat spoiled by three lines of text apparently formatted in 1996.
James Quantz, Jr. Photography: Super slick, highly stylized photography. One of them features Andie McDowell looking very smug and sassy.
Tag Galaxy: Flickr photos displayed in an out-of-this-world design.
********************************************************************************
