Apple.com to be redesigned by Zeldman, Bowman

August 27, 2003 7:55 PM

Apple.com to be redesigned by Zeldman, Bowman Apple has contracted Jeffrey Zeldman of Happy Cog Studios and Douglas Bowman of Stopdesign to collaborate on a redesign of the company's Web site. Congratulations!
posted by dilokiam (24 comments total)

I'll bet it will be orange ;-)
posted by hyperizer at 8:03 PM on August 27, 2003

uhhh... I'm as big an Applefilter apologist as any but... really now.
posted by Space Coyote at 8:10 PM on August 27, 2003

Can they hire someone to make better commercials for them?
posted by ColdChef at 8:13 PM on August 27, 2003

Damn. Steve Jobs just sneezed, and I can't FPP it because I just posted some lame-ass shit about relief workers.
posted by stonerose at 8:14 PM on August 27, 2003

er, no. Stopdesign say's:

Update: To clear up some confusion and speculation, this does not imply a visual redesign is in the works. Happy Cog and Stopdesign will be consulting with the in-house team, providing guidance and a bit of a jump start as they explore the waters of web standards and forward-thinking design.

posted by X-00 at 8:17 PM on August 27, 2003

As long as they don't use copius amounts of text as images, as the site currently stands, this is a very good thing. Of course we can expect the site to be a shining example of using the latest W3C recommendations, and using semantically valid code.
posted by riffola at 8:17 PM on August 27, 2003

Yeah, I could care less what a page looks like, just as long as the w3c validator likes it and structured nicely, like using the H1 tag to reflect the title of the page instead of just using it for larger text. And no spacer images, that's just lazy.
posted by bobo123 at 8:26 PM on August 27, 2003

I think it's great and I'm very excited to see what they do. Thanks for the link, cousin.
posted by timeistight at 8:32 PM on August 27, 2003

Is this AppleFilter or ZeldmanFilter?
posted by kickingtheground at 8:39 PM on August 27, 2003

seriously. congrats to them and stuff, but the only reason you posted this is presumably because zeldman happens to be a figure in certain circles that abut metafilter or blogs or "the community" or whatever ... not really noteworthy in any general capacity.
posted by donkeyschlong at 8:49 PM on August 27, 2003

I disagree. When wired.com adopted a standards-based approach it was post-worthy and this is even more so.
posted by timeistight at 8:58 PM on August 27, 2003

As long as they don't use copius amounts of text as images, as the site currently stands, this is a very good thing.

Problem with Apple is that visual identity, right down to the fonts, is bound up with corporate identity, and brand identity, and everything Apple. Can you imagine an Apple site without that particular sans and serif? This is a computer that's still, at least in the workplace, for graphic designers and desktop publishers; use non-anti-aliased fonts and you alienate that part of your client base. And we all know how rabid Mac zealots can be about any dent in the sacred brand identity: any hint of departing from it and there'll be Mac users with torches at Zeldman's door.

He'll need a big stick to deal with the corporate identity people, or come up with a no-brainer way to ensure that PC users have the default Apple-brand fonts installed.
posted by riviera at 9:16 PM on August 27, 2003

Macromedia recently redesigned, as Todd pointed out they have full CSS/XHTML versions of their site but kind of shoehorn flash onto the front pages.

But aside from some lame ad code, the front page of Macromedia is now valid xhtml. That apple will follow is great news.
posted by mathowie at 9:44 PM on August 27, 2003

yay! i paid $40 bucks for that book! maybe web standards have graduated from pipe dream status OFFICIALLY.
posted by Satapher at 9:58 PM on August 27, 2003

let the guys at cubancouncil do the interface design.
posted by specialk420 at 10:31 PM on August 27, 2003

This is a computer that's still, at least in the workplace, for graphic designers and desktop publishers

I dunno about that. I've been seeing an awful lot of fruit co boxen showing up on coder, sysadmin, and general unixy IT type desktops lately. And the number of iBooks and TiG4s running about Defcon this year was notable. Actually, as I understand it, a lot of the graphic designers have been os 9 holdouts; I think the Apple corps is marching to the beat of a different drum with the metamorphosis of NeXT and FreeBSD into OS X.
posted by ehintz at 11:02 PM on August 27, 2003

this rocks, I'm exited to see what he does with it! (the pressure is on Mr Z. ;)
posted by dabitch at 4:13 AM on August 28, 2003

You guys shouldn't get too excited... Apple's online presence is inextricably bound up with it's overall marketing and communications design (yeah, I know, a lot of corporate sites are, but this is Apple, so it's practically a religion...). With all due respect to Mssrs. Zeldman and Bowman, to think they'll influence the actual look and feel of the site is crazy; as Bowman's own site says, they've just been asked to look at the technical implementation. Unless they have some miracle font technology that nobody knows about, I can all but assure you those "text-pictures" in Apple's corporate Myriad are there to stay...
posted by JollyWanker at 5:13 AM on August 28, 2003

There's nothing inherently wrong with text-as-image as long as it's set up to degrade gracefully (appropriate alt attributes, Fahner image replacement, etc.).

Zeldman may be a standards evangelist, but he's also a practical, real-world designer. If he and Bowman can replicate Apple's current look and feel in standards-compliant markup, they'll have really achieved something.
posted by timeistight at 8:47 AM on August 28, 2003

If anything, some change in content would be welcomed. I'm
obviously not the only one to find their page a little
bit condescend. Here.
posted by NewBornHippy at 10:50 AM on August 28, 2003

If he and Bowman can replicate Apple's current look and feel in standards-compliant markup, they'll have really achieved something.

A better experience for their users? No, not really. Ummm, what exactly will they have achieved again? I suppose it might be easier to maintain but that's not exactly difficult right now, considering Apple's site is built on WebObjects.
posted by kindall at 11:45 AM on August 28, 2003

Certainly a better experience for their vision-impaired users, mobile phone surfing users, robotic users, text-browser users, etc.
posted by timeistight at 12:53 PM on August 28, 2003

timeistight is exactly right.

chew you food and be thankful for both eyeballs.
posted by Satapher at 1:13 PM on August 28, 2003

Not to mention your fast connections. Dialup doesn't like 5 layers of nested tables (neither do slow computers).
posted by Tlogmer at 2:56 PM on August 30, 2003