Neoco

My colleague pointed out some interesting websites to me that she wanted a designers’ perspective on. No point just keeping this to ourselves so here’s what I thought about the most relevant ones. There’s so many sites these days that are trying too hard and failing and so many that ignore aesthetic design all together – it’s always a discussion point in the office. Most of the following is subjective but it’s a more than educated opinion and if you disagree go ahead and tell me why…

This promotional Panasonic website is based on their philosophy that “everything matters.” It uses a very creative approach to a potentially boring subject matter. There’s loads of experiencial user involvement – very slick and well designed. The amount of exploration needed to find information may put some people off, but then that’s not the point – its all about interacting with the site as a whole rather than clicking through to read a load of boring blurb about the latest camera. Every detail seems very considered, and every link brings you to a slightly different experience.

This site from Belgian web designers is essentially a flash-heavy portfolio site. The design creates a clear brand identity using lovely typography. Full screen imagery is also a nice touch. I personally like how minimal and easily usable it is. The direct links to their work online gives them a very open feel – there’s no dicking about with thumbnails and pretty pictures, its real balls on the table. Call me boring and old fashioned though, but it would be nice to see some sort of snap shot of their work in one place rather than going to the effort of clicking around endlessly.

The next site is for the Museum Of Modern Art’s Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit. It’s very different to what I expected – modern art connotes minimalism in my book. That isn’t to say its ugly – it seems very unique and different. However like so much modern art it’s a case of form over function. Does it please the eye? Yes. But practically how am I supposed to find the information I’m looking for? The lack of navigation means I need to scroll across and down the page – which is unnecessarily long and wide – squinting at semi-transparent fonts that seem a couple of point sizes to small for screen legibility. It’s a very print based approach. I’m sure it would make an amazing poster, but its an impractical website.

Type Tester does what it says on the tin. It’s a useful tool, for designers, by designers. It lets you see how text appears on screen with a lot of control over the settings – something you don’t see on other font sites. The addition of a ’safe list’ of web fonts is a nice touch. What else to say really? Looks pretty and does the job.

I like this website, it’s the most straightforward one of the bunch, and from a user perspective possibly the most ‘expected.’ Everything’s in the normal place you’d expect to find it, it’s all quite conventional and usable which means I can get the gist of the company in a hurry with no messing around. And it looks pretty. The only thing I’d say is that it seems like an overuse of Flash for a simple site that could have easily been built in html to a greater effect. There’s an awful lot of type on here that’s getting them zero SEO.

Tags  Flash graphic design Group 94 HTML MOMA Multi Adaptor navigation Panasonic thumbnails type Type Tester Typography usability web design