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A monthly review of Web design and resources.
A monthly review of Web design and resources.
By Ken Coupland
June 2002
Motion Theory <www.motiontheory.com>
Like a fashion designer who wears only a black turtleneck and jeans, the
self-promotion site for advertising hotties Javier Jimenez and Mathew Cullen
and their Venice, California-based motion-design company is deliberately
antistyle. Sporting a bland interface of boxy frames that Sol LeWitt might
have phoned in, it hints at hidden riches--only to serve up a paltry display
of stills (click on "reel") from the firm's television commercials,
overlaid with elaborate interstitial graphics that riff on the interface's
geometrical motif. Look further and you'll find a smattering of thumbnails
and a clip of one of the shop's striking "teasers" for the Showtime
channel.
Typophile <www.typophile.com>
Distinguished by the impressive quality of its font showings, this collaborative
online design community posts works in progress submitted by typographers
worldwide. Hosted by Jared Benson and Joe Pemberton, senior designers at
Razorfish's San Francisco outpost, the sharply executed site addresses
with verve such current topics as designing for cell-phone and related interfaces.
The message board teems with more or less coherent postings that are several
notches above the usual bulletin fare. A related channel--linked to 20-odd
A-list typography sites--offers a free download for Macintosh users that
uses Apple's Sherlock to provide a more focused query than conventional
search engines.
Arne Jacobsen <www.arne-jacobsen.com>
The 100th anniversary of the great Danish designer's birth has prompted
a slew of exhibitions, reeditions, and related activities. Jacobsen acolytes
have produced an online tribute that pledges an in-depth look, over the
coming year, at the somewhat contradictory echt-Modernist. Documenting
events in progress and providing capsule histories and a chronology of his
work, as well as reminiscences by contemporaries, the partially constructed
site was sparsely illustrated when we looked. But the film-clip section
posts a wonderful vintage short--replete with bubbly lounge-jazz accompaniment--that
nicely evokes Jacobsen's comprehensive program for Copenhagen's Royal Hotel.
Creativebase <www.creativebase.com>
Exclusively online, this British-based subscription-only hub promising "information
and inspiration for the visual arts" thoughtfully blends arts reporting
with design coverage. You can choose from any or all of three "newswires"--advertising
and production, architecture and design, and graphics and new media--but
it will cost you plenty. At $207 for all three wires (16 issues per year),
the heavily linked site strains to deliver value. However, a peek at the
newswires' respective home pages--all you're allowed without forking over
the bucks--demonstrates the producers' unerring eye for the edgiest design.
Booby Trap <www.boobytrap.org>
Grim humor enlivens this unnerving paean to high-tech cinematic thrillers.
New York-based auteur Max Panzner has crafted a Flash demonstration
that builds on rotoscoping--the use of live action for animation--to deliver
a black-and-white video-based animation reminiscent of cut-paper collage.
A small miracle of compression, the protracted sequence follows a desperate
fugitive through a minimalist landscape to the accompaniment of a throbbing
percussive score. "I need you to make contact with the others and keep
the channels open," the operative yells, only to be cut off in mid-transmission.
You're then offered the choice of a series of possible scenarios--but whichever
way you go, the outcome is not good.
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