April 26, 2000
12:06 PM   Subscribe

Courtesy of /usr/bin/girl [love that name...], proof that the apocalypse is nigh.
posted by baylink (7 comments total)
 
Skip intro has been around for years. It's required viewing for any class of introductory web or flash designers (are they different?). Skip intro is a great critique against gabocorp and e4u because it removes the argument of "well you're just jealous you can't do something that good". We should want MORE critique against bad design from within the Flash development community.
posted by captaincursor at 12:41 PM on April 26, 2000


How about the decline in traffic? One of our lessor sites (I can't name the company) went from a steady 3-4000 visits a week down to about 3-700 when the designer they hired stuck a big, fat, nasty old flash front-end/intro. Even with a "skip intro" escape hatch.

If that's not real criticism, then what is? Flash intros suck and they suck visitors... don't do it!
posted by Dean_Paxton at 1:02 PM on April 26, 2000


There's a really interesting article in the current New Yorker (the one with money growing on trees on the cover) about...well, about this guy who designs t-shirts. And turn-of-the-century glove makers. Bear with me.
The thesis of the article is that after a certain point, consumers are unable to tell the difference between products. A Honda drives pretty much like a Ford drives pretty much like a Chevy. The fine distinctions between products are all driven by competition between designers, where the incentives are primarily social: prestige, notoriety etc.
My point is...I happen to think that a lot of the foolish design decisions on the web are made because people are thinking of impressing their fellow designers, not because they give a shit about visitors to their site.
posted by lbergstr at 1:25 PM on April 26, 2000


Now getting off topic: that was a great issue (the money issue) as was last year's. Go New Yorker.But the point with the glove makers was that even though everyday consumers couldn't necessarily tell the difference, high-society snobs would evaluate people by their gloves and so people wanted to buy ones that had high-ratings from snobs. Not sure what the analogical application is.
posted by sylloge at 2:02 PM on April 26, 2000


Okay, I've gotten 1,372 balls loaded so far. How many does it need?
posted by dhartung at 2:15 PM on April 26, 2000


Yeahbbut...well, maybe I skipped a paragraph somewhere, but that would change the entire thrust of the article: discriminating consumers influencing the direction of design, as opposed to competitive designers.
In any case...both play their part.
posted by lbergstr at 2:22 PM on April 26, 2000


Giving it a little more consideration, I did draw that from one paragraph. You were "more righter" than me. The desire to appeal to snobs was only the way in which the high quality gloves proliferated. Not the origination of the craze.
posted by sylloge at 8:08 PM on April 27, 2000


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