The Portfolio. A different kind of web site.
November 23, 2002 11:20 AM   Subscribe

The Portfolio. A different kind of web site (courtesy k10k). Great (and sometimes not-so-great) collection of sites that have developed unique ways of presenting their work. (more inside)
posted by poopy (27 comments total)
 
I've always wondered what is the best way (as a designer in any field) to present your work on the web that is both creative and user-friendly? Does anyone have suggestions, ideas? My take:

Technology: DHTML, Flash, or W3C Standards.

Flash currently seems to be the breakfast of champions for most designers, but we've all seen DHTML put to great use also (Actually, I'm most impressed with good dhtml sites considering the amount of insane coding that is involved). The dangers involved with dhtml are of course browsers, platforms, etc. yet Flash offers for those on PC's or MAC's, IE or NS - the majority of the audience - a reliable and efficient way to view these sites so long as they have the plugin. A W3C standards-compliant site provides a way for just about anyone to view the site yet it is bogged down by rules and severe limitations for anything truly radical. My choice of the three would be: 1-Flash, 2-W3C, 3-DHTML.

Popups: To be or not to be.

Aaargghhh...I've seen too many portfolio sites (esp. with flash: There are plenty of scripts out there to determine plugin capability and deal with it without the need for popups) throw another window in my face....for no particular reason. Yes, there are most definitely those cases that are better suited to a fixed window size and a popup is the best solution but it seems like this current trend with popups has gotten way outta control when the designer could have presented the portfolio without any need to inundate me with yet another window to contend with.

Navigation and Usability: Aha! The real clincher.

With traditional sites navigation is essentially a no-brainer: create the simplest, most efficient way for users to dive in (and back out!) without getting lost. This method is typically thrown out the window with many design sites. The designer wants to experiment with alternative modes of navigation, presenting the user with something new and hip. In some cases it works beautifully while at other times the navigation is an utter nightmare. The trick is to find that special balance between conventional and experimental. The best way to master this feat is to try and try and try again.
posted by poopy at 11:21 AM on November 23, 2002


I always liked the curved scrollbar at project euh (and their other material, but that's beside the point here). For the complete opposite, see pentel's website. Go ahead, click on Products, I dare you. Not since the old Doc Marten's page have I used something so frustratingly slow and useless. And everyone loves mystery meat.
posted by whatzit at 11:41 AM on November 23, 2002


I think "fishful winking" at the bottom of the list is super neato.
posted by jaded at 12:09 PM on November 23, 2002


That Jennifer Sterling portfolio you linked is both incredibly brilliant and hideously annoying. Like, wow, she's a really really smart designer. And boy it's aggravating to navigate.
posted by RJ Reynolds at 12:52 PM on November 23, 2002


Like, wow, she's a really really smart designer. And boy it's aggravating to navigate.

This is very true, and can be seen from her other (in)famous work, last year's AIGA Annual 21. As if the Amazon reviews were any indication, she produced the most anti-user friendly book ever known. The annual was supposed to highlight great works from the year, and they were reduced to visual clutter (tiny thumbnails that cropped all the 90% of the works out) in Sterling's design. I remember at the AIGA National conference there was an 5 minute short film that railed that her and that book. She's not very well received in Graphic Design circles.
posted by Stan Chin at 1:03 PM on November 23, 2002


she's a really really smart designer. And boy it's aggravating to navigate.

Yeah, i guess i should've been more clear: Great and Not-so-great IMO. The unfortunate thing about her site is the exhaustive bandwidth involved and lack of clear direction. What i considered 'great' was a truly unique way of navigation, something that was new at the time.

Then again, what I or anyone else considers great is subjective. That's why i tried to pose the question: What do YOU think is the best way for visual designers (specifically, the web, not books) to display their work in a creative yet coherent template? Any examples would be much appreciated.
posted by poopy at 1:45 PM on November 23, 2002


Appetite Engineers has always had one of my favorite online portfolios.
posted by atom128 at 1:50 PM on November 23, 2002


Flash is such a turnoff for me. I don't install it. I just want to see a good design using xhtml....not something put together by an art student/graphic designer.
posted by mkelley at 7:36 PM on November 23, 2002


Bah! On so many levels.

First off, there's a big difference between a Graphic Designer and a web lacky. Graphic Designers usually go to school for a few years, learn about the fundementals of design like type and layout, study the masters, and have a general understanding of why somethings are generally thought to look "good".

A web lacky is someone who's dabbled in doodling in high school, can use Photoshop and overuse Kai's Power Toolkit, and might have some general scripting abilities, but tend to overuse them so people will think they're gurus. The difference between the two is that the first wants to make something beautiful and yet (for the web) useable, the latter wants to make something slick and doesn't care about the browsing experience.

Second. To those who are anti-Flash, would you please uninstall Internet Explorer or Mozilla and start using a text-based browser. Otherwise peddle your hypocrasy somewhere else. Flash isn't just Kung-Fu stick figures and 800k intro screens, you know? It's also cross-platform, it supports (and embeds) true-type fonts, and most importantly, you can design a layout that can SCALE to the user's browser. That means no more scroll bars, whether you're at 640x480 or 1600x1200. Flash is friggin' amazing, and the scripting abilities are beautiful.

And on the topic of cross-platform usability, there's nothing technically amazing about writing cross-browser scripts that work on Netscape 4 for PC's that don't barf on IE 4.5 for Macs. Simply use a good scripted objects library (DynAPI comes to mind) and your code will work anywhere.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 8:40 PM on November 23, 2002


The difference between the two is that the first wants to make something beautiful and yet (for the web) useable, the latter wants to make something slick and doesn't care about the browsing experience.

huh? from what i've seen, the first wants to make the site beautiful/slick and doesn't care about the browsing experience. web lackies tend to not have nearly as impressive looking sites, but are usually better structured, have more usable navigation, and use w3c standard code.
posted by lotsofno at 9:36 PM on November 23, 2002


lotsofno, Civil_Disobedient -- it sounds like you're both trying to describe the incompetent and competent in the field. The fact is, there exist people who are good and bad at the job, whether they got a degree or not, in _every_ field of endeavor.

This is more a case of pushing oneself to master the form than it is a case of design training or the lack of it.
posted by Kikkoman at 3:30 PM on November 24, 2002


Those are the only two choices? Perhaps interest in aesthetics and interest in usability are orthogonal, rather than opposed.
posted by dhartung at 3:39 PM on November 24, 2002


Mmm... mystery meat...
posted by Pretty_Generic at 4:40 PM on November 24, 2002


Flash is friggin' amazing, and the scripting abilities are beautiful.

Agree on the first, disagree on the second. When flash has a decent parser that properly supports XML DOM methods it will be good (no getElementsByTagName? What were they thinking?). XPath or XQuery would be nice, too. If Macromedia realy wants to crush dhtml, it should extend actionscript to be a strongly typed OO language with a decent inheritance model. Flash scripted in Python, perhaps? That would be really amazing.
posted by normy at 5:58 PM on November 24, 2002


Second. To those who are anti-Flash, would you please uninstall Internet Explorer or Mozilla and start using a text-based browser. Otherwise peddle your hypocrasy somewhere else.

d00d
YOU
ARE
MY
HERO:-)


something that needs to be pointed out that the slashdot weenies of the world and anti-flash ppl don't understand is that flash as a tool is really amazing and has solved so many problems that could not be otherwise, and has presented so many more solutions that would be impossible otherwise;

it's a truly awesome tool, yet it is unfortunate that some harsher, biased and puritanical critics have gone and improperly associated the tool (flash) with the poor usage of it as done by a moronic designer; (as shown by several of the sites posted above) whenever a conversation comes up on slashdot, it's all of 5 posts before someone claims they hate flash b/c of stupid shite that people were making in 1998 ... and sadly ... stupid shite that designers continue to make; there are good uses of flash and there are bad uses of flash; ... but that doesn't make the tool itself bad .. just the designer;

so yes
lynx for the rest of you
posted by 11235813 at 6:09 PM on November 24, 2002


Not gonna use lynx, because most of the sites I visit are useful without the flash plug-in. Does that mean I don't like beautiful sites? Hell no. But most of the time I see flash on a website, it's for an ad or for the typical floating in and out graphic that gets so annoying. This isn't a slight to the flash designers out there, there are some good ones, but for me. I prefer not to use flash.

" can use photoshop and overuse Kai's Power Toolkit"

I see just as many bad html sites as I do flash sites. Get flash/kai off of a warez site and go to work. Using those tools doesn't make you a designer instantly. So many people who add flash to a page do it to mainly say "w00t I can have nifty little buttons that spin around". If that works for the sites you develop, great, but it's not for me.
posted by mkelley at 6:29 PM on November 24, 2002


poopy:

Generally, I find that W3C-compliant sites are far less restricted than Flash sites. After all, in Flash you can only access your art via a GUI -- with W3C standards, you're painting in code.
posted by Ptrin at 10:02 PM on November 24, 2002


Ptrin - W3C standards have absolutely nothing in the world to do with flash whatsoever ... W3C is just a reccommended set of standards for marking up a document; in that case, i can write code to embed a flash movie in a doc and pass it through a validator ... which would make it W3C compliant;

Mkelly -

So many people who add flash to a page do it to mainly say "w00t I can have nifty little buttons that spin around".

That is so true; very good point; I think the problem is, is that so many "designers" are more excited by doing something (ie: kewl buttons, intros) then finding a valid reason for its implementation; (the whole argument of "just b/c you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD);

yet on another note, i've been on many a project where technologies were chosen against the will of the designer/developer, but were used because execs and art directors like to use the word "flash" for buzzword compliancy and a squishy feeling in the pants;
posted by 11235813 at 1:33 AM on November 25, 2002


I tend to appreciate flash designers who aren't so hung up over that Eric Jordan, robo-Flash shit. I know I'm on a computer, that doesn't mean we have to pretend we're in the year 4050. Artists also have to remember that drawing skills and style are still very valuable- All in Photoshop and Illustrator is lazy. Pick up a pen. (Did somebody say Mystery Meat?! Portfolio Link via HOW magazine)
posted by dgaicun at 7:17 AM on November 25, 2002


lynx for the rest of you

Actually, lynx for many of our visitors. And JAWS. Flash is cool but many of us working on government and educational sites don't have the time to make it accessible and/or do all the necessary workarounds.

I want people to keep using it on their personal sites, though, so there'll be more pressure on Macromedia to make it accessible.
posted by whatnot at 7:41 AM on November 25, 2002


Why are our names in italics?! Is it just me?
posted by dgaicun at 8:15 AM on November 25, 2002


closing italics tag.
posted by whatnot at 11:21 AM on November 25, 2002


To those who are anti-Flash, would you please uninstall Internet Explorer or Mozilla and start using a text-based browser. Otherwise peddle your hypocrasy somewhere else.

Where's the hypocrisy? I'm "anti-flash", so far as such a label makes sense, because flash does not improve the web experience in any way I care about. I'm here to drive. I want the web page to sit there and shut up and let me do whatever I want to do. What power Flash gives to the designer seems to come from something taken away from me, the user. Well, screw that - I want more control over the browser, not less.

Each to their own: I'm sure there are people who find the animations enjoyable, who don't mind learning a completely different UI for every single page they visit, and who don't think sitting through a thirty-second introductory animation is a pointless waste of time. I'm sure there are people who don't care that they can't chop the ends off URLs to navigate, who don't expect every click to create a new entry in their history menu, who don't demand the ability to open any clickable entity of their choosing in a new window. These things matter to me. Perhaps current Flash lets designers decide to include these features - but it's still the designer's choice, the designer's power, and I'm expected to live with whatever they decide. No thanks.

In your zeal for Flash, you mistake mere personal preference for hypocrisy: I like it this way, and I don't like it that way, and I need no more justification than that.

Flash isn't just Kung-Fu stick figures and 800k intro screens, you know? It's also cross-platform, it supports (and embeds) true-type fonts, and most importantly, you can design a layout that can SCALE to the user's browser. That means no more scroll bars, whether you're at 640x480 or 1600x1200. Flash is friggin' amazing, and the scripting abilities are beautiful.

That's funny; I've been watching plain-HTML web sites scale to the user's browser for years now. In fact, I've written one or two myself. HTML, wonder of wonders, seems to show up just fine on every platform I've ever used - and it draws with TrueType fonts on systems that use TrueType, if you can believe that.

Flash may be amazing, but it's also a proprietary technology. It lives in binary files and has to be edited with custom tools which you have to pay for. Flash does nothing for the open, extensible, standards-based Internet I haven't quite given up hope on.
posted by Mars Saxman at 12:14 PM on November 25, 2002


Mars Saxman,

C'mon bro, if you're gonna plug html over flash, aren't you gonna back up your claims & provide us with some worthy examples of competitive HTML capability?

Not that I entirely disagree with you, but if I pretend to demand proof I'm more likely to score some hot links.

Seriously, am I the only one who is seeing user-name italics? WTF?
posted by dgaicun at 12:51 PM on November 25, 2002


Each to their own: I'm sure there are people who find the animations enjoyable, who don't mind learning a completely different UI for every single page they visit, and who don't think sitting through a thirty-second introductory animation is a pointless waste of time. I'm sure there are people who don't care that they can't chop the ends off URLs to navigate, who don't expect every click to create a new entry in their history menu, who don't demand the ability to open any clickable entity of their choosing in a new window. These things matter to me.

d00d
please disassociate the tool from things that stupid 'designers' do; your claims are not against the technology but against moronic designers with no sense for usability or functionality; THAT should be your gripe ... NOT FLASH;

Flash may be amazing, but it's also a proprietary technology. It lives in binary files and has to be edited with custom tools which you have to pay for. Flash does nothing for the open, extensible, standards-based Internet I haven't quite given up hope on.

Is there something wrong with proprietary technology? Especially in the case of Flash? Perhaps Adobe should give away AfterEffects too? Yea it's proprietary ... and it's also [somewhat] open at the same time. this is a win win for everybody. Try writing DHTML anytime? WASTE OF TIME; Rewriting code over and over and over again for every single browser, platform, etc; W3C standards have not fixed that; Macromedia brings it all under one roof. No compatibility issues to worry about. Just install the small plugin and you're good to go. (for the most part)

Also, Macromedia released the spec for it ... SWF is an open format. only the macromedia GUI is proprietary; Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it has been open for a few years now; This has spawned a plethora of free tools available;
posted by 11235813 at 1:16 PM on November 25, 2002



Where's the hypocrisy? I'm "anti-flash", so far as such a label makes sense, because flash does not improve the web experience in any way I care about.

Purely a subjective stance.

I'm here to drive. I want the web page to sit there and shut up and let me do whatever I want to do. What power Flash gives to the designer seems to come from something taken away from me, the user. Well, screw that - I want more control over the browser, not less.

This is why any competent Web designer would create a "lo-cal" edition of the site that works in straight HTML (or uses a "flash-sniffer" to see if Flash is installed—if not, the HTML site would load instead).

Flash-driven sites and portfolios are generally created that way because it can all fit in one file. HTML may be totally open and accessable, but as far as i know, I can't just pass it along to another person in one small file... I have to load each and every bit of text and image as individual files. ...Lord help you if you need your HTML pages to look the same on all browsers and all platforms. Even CSS-support hasn't improved to that level. If I wanted my portfolio online, on a CD-ROM and in a presentable format to attach to an e-mail, Flash is the simplest and most effective way to do all three.

Really, Flash's main purpose is to be interactive multimedia software, rather than be a replacement for HTML. It allows high-resolution graphics and text to be compressed into a fast-loading document that uses less strain on transfer connection and more strain on a computer processors/video card speeds. It's the ultimate tool for scalable graphic presentation, and just about every platform can support it. (Also, it's a nice way to lock files into place so that users would be unable to deep-link into your graphic files. Funny how no one has brought up that issue yet...)

All that really matters about Flash technology is that it meets the standards fo usability, and Macromedia has shown an effort to do that (why else would they hire Jakob Nielsen?).
posted by Down10 at 4:38 PM on November 25, 2002


Stop the madness.
posted by modofo at 5:24 PM on November 25, 2002


« Older CIA Picture Pages, FBI Picture Pages!   |   Claes Oldenburg Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments