A Few of My Favorite Things

Being asked to name your "favorite" or the "best" anything is always tricky. How can I possibly pick just one? How an I pick a favorite band, a favorite book, a favorite artist, or a favorite or best website as we've been asked to do this week for our blog post. Since I couldn't quickly think of a favorite website that could correlate to my homepage design, I considered how best to find such sites without simply searching the web randomly. So to find great websites, I turned to Communication Arts, which conducts an annual design competition for interactive media.

One of the first sites which I identified was Jam 3 Media. This is a company that specializes in interactive media, motion graphics, and Flash animation. As such, their website clearly follows the mantra of "form follows function." It makes much sense that this company's site would showcase these same interactive features on their own site. This, I believe, allows the designers greater latitude in stuffing their site with many "bells and whistles," but only to a certain point. It is easy to see that the site comes very close to including too many features, and this contributes to longer loading times in certain instances. This site includes an introductory Flash animation, as all of my examples do. I know some people don't like to navigate these short films prior to entering a website (hence the "skip intro" buttons on most), but I think for websites that are dedicated to some manner of design or creative output, most visitors to these sites don't mind such features. I am currently creating a Flash animation for my own homepage.

One of the other things that I really like about this site is that it has a very dense, multi-layered narrative – there are many ways to access the content both by using the links on the left-hand side or allowing your cursor to pause on top of any of the thumbnails included in the title logos. And there's certainly a lot of content to access. For added interactivity, there is also a blog that features the company's most recent work and highlights their process and accolades. I, too, plan to include a link to a professional blog on my website. And check out the T3tris (Tetris) game. This site allows quite a bit of flexibility in how one navigates the site, but the point of view and perspective are fairly stable and so does not allow complete interactivity. While the camera is essentially fixed, the zoom and construction effects that are employed when the title logos are loaded create the sense of movement and thus the passage of time. In this site, form clearly follows function in that the site design is intended to showcase their interactive work and thus all the features on the site itself include such elements of interactivity.

This website also directed me to a couple of other sites that I really enjoyed such as that of Figure 3. Of all the sites featured in this post, this is probably my "favorite" one. Again there is an introductory Flash movie, but this site also features really sophisticated color use, a strong use of typography and the company's logo, and effective layout throughout. I also like the way this site incorporates the secondary or alternative menu at the bottom of the page that supports the menu that is embedded in the graphic elements of the site. I also think this site has good consistency throughout – there is as much attention given to the secondary and internal pages as there is to the homepage. This site's menu categories are similar to what I have been thinking of including in my site and include: "Who are we," "What we do," "Ideas in action," "How we do it," "Client stories," "Who we work with," "Media and events," "Q&A," and "Contact us." This site does not, however, include much malleability in terms of perspective, point of view, or camera location. This narrative is fairly structured and so the ability of the reader to interact with the narrative is somewhat limited. But still a very successful site.

Some other sites that I visited and enjoyed included:

• Loopmedia+inc., which is again a good example of strong composition and color use, as well as placed video and a creative way to select menu options; and
  
• Underground Lane, which asks the reader to employ their intuition to navigate through the site, which could be annoying to some people. I'll admit that it took me a few seconds to understand what I needed to do to engage with the site; and
• JLern Design, which of all the sites allows the most ability to change the perspective or point of view of the reader. This technique does work to immerse the reader in the narrative and it was nice to see a non-rotating menu that provided an alternative way, a simpler way to navigate the site. This site makes navigation an intuitive function of the cursor's movement which is a really creative characteristics that I had not seen before; and finally...
• Firstborn Multimedia, which again is an example of bold color, strong typography and design, and good organization. I also like the menu categories on this site which include: "Our portfolio," "Who we are," "Our news," and "Contact us." I also like the way that the portfolio thumbnails are featured in a sliding filmstrip – a feature which I had already considered including in my site. This site also has a really strong underlying grid structure on all of the pages, which you don't readily see on most websites.

My early plans for my homepage include an introductory Flash animation (with the ability to skip the introduction) and menu categories that include: a portfolio, a contact-me section, a CV section, an academic section, and an interactive section (titles still to be determined). The Flash animation, through the use of both type and imagery, will create an initial impression of me as a creative, professional communicator with the ability to work in multiple mediums. Some of these main menu selections will include submenus such as the portfolio page, which will include illustrations, graphic design, and writing samples. The interactive section will include my professional blog and podcasts. The academic portion will include sample syllabi, my teaching philosophy, sample lectures, and course-related podcasts. The CV will include hypertext links to presentations, publications, and professional affiliations. Because of the need to control the image conveyed, the perspective and point of view will be fairly tightly controlled but there will be multiple ways to navigate to areas of the site, as well as a comment or feedback feature embedded at some level. I haven't yet determined where to place this. I've decided to forego a free hosting site and instead host my site on FatCow in order to allow me to integrate some of these advanced features. As the site progresses, I will post elements of the design on this site for feedback. I'll be using Dreamweaver and Flash as my primary software tools.

My question for everyone else this week is to what extent do introductory Flash animations annoy you if at all? Do you regularly skip them, or do you enjoy watching them and why?