group94

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  • formed0

    Remember Hi-Res? Damn, there stuff is no better now either. Donnie Darko? I loved that the sites were truly an experience, something unpredictable and fun. Now we just have stupid grids everywhere (yeah, yeah, works great for boring crap, I get that).

    Firstborn still have their flash site live, thank god, that was a great one too.

    Man, this is making me feel nostalgic! If the web were like it is today I surely would have never been interested at all (I left a career as an architect for it). There's nothing to sell a client on, web design wise, anymore. It is just a grid compatible with mobile, that's it. Investments plummet, too, as you can't really do anything interesting, there is no value in spending anything more on online.

  • reanimate0

    Interesting discussion. I think it's more a case of people following trends than anything. Even before the iPad was released, the trend in the design community was towards minimal, functional sites without Flash.

    There is nothing stopping people today from doing experimental work - whether with Flash, HTML5 or some other technology - but people see a certain kind of website and assume they have to follow the mold.

  • formed0

    True, things were advancing to something more functional vs. experimental, but they were still "good".

    But things were easier with Flash. You knew it would work on all browsers, now there's no way.

    I disagree that people want to follow the mold, though. Our clients want that Flash website from 5 years ago, but there's no way they'll pay for anything similar nowadays. Just too many variables to make it practical to 'try' to create something different/better than the norm.
    So I have to educate them that it is just not practical to do anything 'cool' anymore. Not one client is happy they can't do a Flash site, I can assure you that (at least out clients).

    It is only because of the iPad that our clients don't do Flash websites anymore. And the monopolistic power of Apple has created a market that has no choice or flexibility but to conform.

    • Really? No one I talk to wants a Flash website anymorereanimate
  • detritus0

    Strikes me that a lot of these beloved grandiose showcase sites from yesteryear indicate more an industry struggling to come to terms with an entirely new medium, rather than a contemporary drop in creativity.

    Also, you lot growing up a little, closing off some of your previously favoured means of discovery and cynically glossing over that which you don't show an interest in.

    *shrugs*

    • Of course, I'm generalising - but then so is everyone here.detritus
    • The only way to make a strong point on the internet is to generalise.inteliboy
  • Continuity0

    'Strikes me that a lot of these beloved grandiose showcase sites from yesteryear indicate more an industry struggling to come to terms with an entirely new medium, rather than a contemporary drop in creativity.'

    Not entirely sure about this. You could also interpret it as a sort of Marketing Communication v Tech-Focused Web fight.

    For ages, the Web was all about informational websites, without any sort of entertainment value ... Jakob Nielsen's wet dream, really. It was conceived by geeks, run by geeks ('webmasters'!) and the geeks often dismissed the inherent creative possibilities. In those days, one _built_ websites, one didn't _create_ communication concepts using the Web and all of its fun tech as a medium.

    Enter the agencies, who have a go at making it entertaining and engaging, and so we get all of those really cool showcase sites.

    The problem is, the geeks got to the Web first before the agencies did, and hammered on and on and on about things like low image overhead, usability, grids and all of the things Nielsen's band of Zombie Interweb Gestapo managed to convince the broader internet-using public were Good Things.

    The death of Flash is part of that battle, in a sense; Nielsen and his gang of anti-design thugs went on and on about how bad Flash is, and a lot of his old arguments came back as Flash was on its last leg, and Steve Jobs gave it the finger.

    So now, it's back to a Web for geeks. WordPressing and Bootstrapping geeks, but geeks all the same. With any luck, technology will develop in such a way that the common platforms can offer something in the way of creative latitude in the same way Flash did.

  • fate0

    Remember Parasol Island?

    It was an island of their own creation you could explore. Really well done and beautifully animated.

    Now their site looks like every other Ca/rgo site:

    http://www.parasol-island.com/

  • formed0

    I guess the worst part I see is that there is no differentiation between the low and high ends. Before, you'd see the campaigns as mentioned already, that were full experiences, movies, animations, all customized to be an interactive experience. Some AMAZING creativity combined with great programming (damn, G94 was sooooo smooth!).

    Now we get everyone's page looking like a template (more or less). So why would anyone spend much on webdesign? There's nothing worth investing in beyond the grid template, and even then, you might as well just buy a template because even "custom" looks like a template at the end of the day!

    I do hope there is some progress. There are glimpses here and there, but it is happening so much slower than even Flash developed way back when.

    Oh well, at least WP and such make generic easier and you don't ever have to worry about another company really being 'better'.

  • inteliboy0

    Well, it sounds like this is all a very subjective thing. Some see the web as maturing, others see it as getting boring. I don't think there is a right or wrong here...

    Though I definitely think if you stepped back 5-0 years you'll be severely disappointed with how shit everything looked on the internet.

    • 5-10 sorryinteliboy
    • The bad looked worse then, but the good looked so much better than today. Now it is almost the same.formed
  • mikotondria30

    We've all kind of allied ourselves to a small number of seemingly unbreakable codes, that emerged in the first half of the 00s, somewhat justifiably, but we've got locked into them. They center largely around conventions of usability. What happened as Flash was bloating and web2.0 as a UX concept - and a design aesthetic, was coming to the fore, is that it - became - set - in - stone, that the logo goes top left, a properly meaningfully described menu below or to the right of that, some engaging artistic imagery below that, to include some brand values via sharp, sterile copy and design, prominent content below that, column of incidentals to the right, and middle etc etc etc. All our sites - no matter what the subject, became bound up in the old-world inherited concepts of magazine readership. Now we are driven by ipad views, we've just transplanted the previous generation of media onto the new media and it's become choked. Flash helped break the mold and evolved a novel, seemingly endless way of presenting brands and art and encouraging and fostering interaction and novel relationship-building regimes. We've stopped animating, and have confined video to formulaically live in a little box as one stop on a jquery slider. It's all become still, and static, and rigid.
    We need to rediscover dynamic, novel ways to engage and entertain - not forgetting the basic usability rules that we learned by making bad flash sites. We need user paths and information easily findable, usable, relevant and sharable, but instead of a page being a single node connected to dozens of one-step journeys, we need to reintroduce story-telling and multi-step experiences, not give it all up above the fold. Now we've got bigger screens and better typographical choices and the means of production of motion and complex static graphics are more accessible. It can be the start of something it once was, if we can just break out of the paradigm that the tools control the product - it can all be powered by wp as far as I care.
    etc.

  • fadein110

    I blame Jeffrey Zeldman more than Apple. Standards are a great idea of course but generating accessible cross browser sites without using plugins undoubtably stifles creativity. Apple are also to blame. My clients are small to medium and none of them will touch Flash now purely because of the iPad. Creativity and experimentation are low on the agenda nowadays. Clients have wised up to their audience. However I can see benefits to both sides.

    • sometimes sites seem to be more about adhering to semantic standards code and less about the the final product which is always a user experience.fadein11
    • which is always a user experience.fadein11
  • inteliboy0

    I swear I used to read on here constant bitching about bad design on the web, the lack of grids or any layout principals, poor typography, stupid sounds, annoying animated navs that u need to figure out for each new website blah blah...

  • instrmntl0

    It's amazing how slow and shitty animated gifts play on an iPad in the animated gifts thread. It can't handle them all. This is the platform that people now want sites delivered on.

    • EXACTLY! Why did those Flash pussies let one stupid device stop them from developing??????monospaced
  • utopian0

    The "ME" generation has finally caught up to web design!

  • webazoot0

    As an end user I can only think of half a dozen times a flash website I was using actually warranted the use of flash or made the site more entertaining or 'engaging'. Generally they were just a hindrance to finding the information you wanted to get to.

    • So what HTML website do you find exciting, engaging, and entertaining?utopian
    • All the ones with content, perhaps? I wholly agree, webazoot.detritus
  • fate0

    Webazoot, that kind of attitude is turning the web into a digital version of the Yellow Pages.

    There *is* a place websites that function as art & entertainment.

    Not everyone is a rat in a maze trying to find the piece of cheese the quickest.

  • utopian0

    Boz Bump!

  • utopian0

    The interwebs in general, has become all about replication and the regurgitation of everyone else's... lazy, boring, replicated, regurgitated shit.

  • ernexbcn0

    Flash still lives... on the 20 PCs Boz has at home.

  • reanimate0

    What's stopping people from creating Flash sites today?

    If you believe in it that much, sell the client on a Flash site and a smaller alternate site aimed at mobile.

    There is also no reason for the template-like WordPress look of many sites, other than the fact that it's what everyone else is doing.

    I still say this has more to do with trends (which most people follow mindlessly) than any technological barrier.

  • Continuity0

    'What's stopping people from creating Flash sites today?'

    As such, nothing; however, the anti-Flash/pro-Turn-the-Interweb... crowd have managed to change perceptions against the technology, which makes it an incredibly hard sell.

    Trend or not, this one is really difficult to break through.

    • Can't wait for a fully specced authoring tool for html5/canvas/etcmikotondria3
    • Whatever it was it wasn't Steve jobs.monospaced