Flash heavy site, less text

Patron is a luxury liquor brand and truly produced in traditional handmade among the others. The site  lets users to have the feeling as if they are in a middle of a party. By moving the mouse, and exploring the page, users trigger and mix audio files, the faded background audio & music behind the party scenes is also to supports the experience as how just a real scene like people chatting, having a conversation then the other people responding it, is quite unique & catchy. 

With less text and a big Patron Citronge product on the middle and dynamic experience of playfully active conversation bubbles around it transforms into a personalized of each content for example,when checking out patron silver, all content that appears around the bottle relates to it),and although various pieces of content can be moved and tossed around, they alway gravitate back to the bottles-the result of a physics simulation model running on the backend. Also a top navigation bar combines all the properties that relate to the patron spirits brand, an interactive navigation allows users to directly access into the content areas. This website is worth to check even though it is a flash heavy site, but it is still acceptable and consider better compare to the other tequila's sites.

A diverse selections of films, documentaries without any commercials

Robert Redford (American actors) founded the Sundance film festival in Utah 1978. Yet he has begun to redesign the site and him as a creative directors of the Sundance Channel which offers audiences a diverse selection of films, mockumenter and documentaries, and also unedited programs with no commercials.

Prior to the redesign, the site's focus is program-related information such as the new concept repositions it as destination beyond scheduling and promotion. To support on-air programming, and persuade audience participation and interaction, the content is organized by two sections which are Vision and Voice. Rich with videos, images and texts, Vision promotes the channel's on-air assets. While Voice is the site's interactive, with discussion boards, blogs and spotlights on creative, innovation and emerging talent.

The interactive side of this site is evident in the multiple flash modules included on the site, especially the Vision and Voice links that offer an accesible way to move between the two sections. It is a solid offering with an interface that promotes exploration and sample throughout a series of links.

A Color Palette site for graphics people

Think ink: Color unleashed is a microsite launhed by Neenah paper to help graphic designers create color palettes that in turn can inspire their design and paper choice. If I click an on-screen buttons such as trustful, ordered, carefree or impulsive, then choose a dominant color, Think Ink automatically suggest four sample palettes. A built-in tool lets me to test and create palettes on using an on-screen white board complete with sample test, drop & drag swatches and the ability to upload photo images.

Zooming the artifacts

www.americanrevolution.org is an online exhibit website operates with its mission to create the first national museum explaining the whole story of American revolution. It takes one of the most memorable eras of U.S. history and makes it applicable and accessible through visually-stunning website.

The users can explore by zooming in on the objects so they would be able to see & feel a lot of details on each artifacts. They can also listen to the podcasts from its curator who explains the background of each artifacts' history. On the very bottom there are timetable buttons that explain those timeless artifacts & history from the memorable Boston tea party to the image of Ronald Reagan of General Washington in Pennsylvania. The style is quite minimal with the full-bleed background images of collection of painting and collages that scale fit to the browser. The content is easily shared through the social-networking technologies embedded through the site. In conclusion, this website is very exciting that is somehow eliminates the boringness of history lessons and in a way much more fun & saving time rather than going to a museum.

The growing digital fantasmagories of Julien Pacaud

Institutdrahomira is a group of artists and designers whose being not only within working in collages, cut & paste, photo or vector manipulation, multiplying textures, abstract painting but also experts in making film and music. The french based artist Julien Pacaud started it with the help of his friend from his film school Jean-Christophe Sanchez. 

The site contains various portfolio of Julien and Sanchez's work. Divided by 4 sub-parts which are perpendicular dreams that shows Julien's proficiency in art and design. Under 66 polaroids that never existed he has also shown his strenght of photo manipulations.

Games on facebook application? I'd rather go with this one

Why choose games on facebook application while an entertainment site like scarygirl.com is out there for you to play? With fantastic environments and characters, engaging sounds, outstanding graphics and multiple-choice storylines, this gaming site is an immersion into a scary girl's world. It gives the collectible figure a background story to hit a much broader target audience. I think Scarygirl has succesfully developed an all ages game from around the world. Since the characters are introduced, I can go through investigations with the platform 2D game play and pictograms communication as I easily drift inherent in the world of it altough, I am not big fan of gaming sites. The scarygirl game is one facet of a bigger picture for the brand that includes graphic novels, limited-edition toys, feature films & exhibition.

Beach Freaks Don't Like Secrets of Massive Websites!

Beach Freaks Don't Like Secrets of Massive Websites, that is Charles Balls' slogan I hear 

almost everywhere. I've been a huge fan of his website www.cosmicdudes.com, a website that sells some obscure records with crazy prices! Did not know that he also has a creative side doing movie animation and motion graphics, until my roomate made a song that Charles would like to buy it as a scoring music for one of parasol-island's commercial.

It starts with memorable underwater soundscape, a magnificent mix animation in between under the deepest sea. In the middle there is a tempting full screen mode button which leads your eyes to click on it. On top of the left side I can still see a spark of light shining through. Right under it there is the company's logo, a capital P which reminds me a lot of Portishead's the band logo. I even think it has used the same based typeface with a black bold background but this time they stretched it up and addded a little umbrella to get a tropical feel. To me, mostly graphic design nowadays are always a modification of the past. Originality and authenticity will never be as pure as it can be. It is always a remake of a popular thing in the past. To emulate or to be inspired by a style is a hint of normalcy, but it has to have a twisted new look and a prove of betterment. Fairly loaded, on the way, hold on baby, nearly done, got it those five sign buttons come sequentially adjacent to the logo while its loading.

This site contains portfolio selection of clips from their work, company profile, and perfect organic with a tropical feel of a balearic-beach sounding illustrated animations. On the right side there is a big enjoy the island button that you can't miss it. It is an online experience that caters to those who wanting a visual and audio experience within a perfect scoring sound effects as well as those interested in playing around but not forgotten about finding information about the company's vision. Ahh take me there, I need my holiday!

A perfect digital download store website in all flash site with functionality disabled

Let's get to the point that I had to admit beatport.com was one of the pioneer of digital download store website for Mp3 format. They had decent music (commercial music for big room DJs), great flash elements, fair enough graphics (the style is kind of old, maybe good enough few years ago but still acceptable) and was a fun site to browse. Since they changed their site to the flash 3.0 version which works dynamic redirects and not a site index functional, everything seems not to be working in order. I had my own experience when I did a purchase there was slightly a problem when I was downloading a track, the track seems to be incomplete. They did a serious issues damage to their search optimization. So a website in all flash site with functionality disabled? No way!

Good fashion website worth to talk over? Why not?

As a fashion website oki-ni.com stands out as one of the most interesting menswear online retail to look at. With the clean & simple flash buttons represent on every brands on the banner which helps to create a publication proposing an experimental and contemporary vision of modern culture and style. The users/customers can easily clarify its options that are tempting to spend some of their time in front of the screen, for instance if the customers click on the music section (sell 12" vinyls, headphones, and essential stuff for DJing) all layout changes to let's say if you are looking at an online record store website. On the features section, 'style' sub-parts offers you to combine how to dress up from top to bottom. They have also managed to build this web site to function as a more of a web blog feel with their 'latest news' sub-parts.

Aesthetically, oki-ni has built a concept that is pushing the boundaries of E-commerce by simply to keep discovering the most interesting products and brands available in the market place and hosting them in an environment that resembles who and what they are. They are not just a fashion website their interest range across many creative disciplines and boundaries. A true reflection of how they have created their website.

Simplicity or Motion everywhere?

Flash websites that is often seen 2-3 years ago were mostly the playful ones with a lot of moving motion. But there has been a change recently, not just that ordinary people have been starting to use stuff like blogger or tumblr which are much more easier but also given the fact that flash websites with a lot of moving objects are quite annoying and sometimes can be pointless. Above I also include an example that I found out is interesting visually but in terms of its usage can be quite un-user friendly. I will be analyzing websites that I think is good but also some of the bad websites here until the end of term.