Housekeeping: I’m back for post number two. I’m still holding off on two other posts. I don’t think they’re critical enough. I have no idea really. I just need to be distant from them as to make sure I’m not slagging. I don’t think I am. But, you know. Professionalism. Right, moving on.
Tronic have a new website. You may have seen it linked to from a few other websites or all over twitter or maybe on QBN, CPLUV, etc. I happened to just randomly decide to visit the site to see if there was any new content updates and bam a new website. Neat.
History lesson: I’ve been aware of the studio for a while. I forget how I came across their work. Maybe through Stash, or IDN, or BD4D, or just randomly through a project they worked on that I saw and looked up who worked on it. I saw Jesse Seppi & Vivian Rosenthal do a talk at OFFF 2007 NYC. They were on a panel with Justin Cone (of Motionographer), Buck, & Psyop. I think Justin was moderating if I remember correctly. Anyway, I had a chance to meet Vivian over the course of the …three… days of the event. I doubt she remembers me (I was the guy holding back the from exploding with fanboyism and wearing this shirt). Tronic started following me on twitter, which was the highlight of that particular day (I was having a fairly rotten day made up of thinking about beginning the creation of some data visualizations of really boring data). I love their work almost unconditionally (unconditional love isn’t required as their work just plain rocks).
How do I feel about the website? I love it. But it’s all Flash and HTML5 is going to take over. Yea but no. I’ll get to the Flash bit in a minute. The website is really nicely designed. Black, white and cyan are a nice sharp, punchy, contrasty colour scheme. They’ve opted for the horizontal layout. This seems to be the way of the future. What with all our screens being wider than tall anyway, I’m surprised this didn’t happen right from the beginning. The mix of serifs and sans serifs works well as well. I love the Hoefler Text ampersands. That’s a nice classy touch. Something else I enjoy design wise is the randomly rotating home page images. It’s a nice way to quickly get some work across.
Obviously a portfolio website for a design studio is going to look nice, what about function? Well, every page (or Flash state) is written out to the URL. Which is why I could link to their various projects two paragraphs above. All the text can be copy pasted. All the link title text from two paragraphs up was copy/pasted. You can scroll ball/wheel through the website. Perfect. Does it need to be done in Flash? Nope. But who cares, it’s fast, I can bookmark random pages, I can copy text, I can do anything I would expect to do. BUT YOU CAN’T USE YOUR iPHONE!!! So? I want to see this videos large. Besides you can always Youtube them (or you can click that link as I’ve done it for you).
Okay, I guess I would question why it was done in Flash, as, yes, that does limit the potential number of viewers to the site. There’s also no alternate content, which is a bit of a problem. I like the idea of Flash being an interactive layer on top of the content (HTML). Like how CSS and Javascript are style and behavioral layers on top of the HTML. I know *A LOT* of art directors that have taken up colour proofing on the iPhone (yes, I know, idiotic, but it happens) and will probably do all their work from the comfort of an iPad in the next few months. It’s unfortunate because these are generally the people we have to build our portfolios for. Maybe not though. I don’t know if Tronic works direct with a client or if their clients are larger firms like Goodby or Ogilvy or Wolff Olins or some such.
This website is a nice change. I’m fairly sick of seeing the WordPress blog theme as portfolio that’s been going strong for the last year or two. Maybe even last three. Those aren’t portfolios. I don’t feel like I’ve landed on a portfolio when I visit websites that a mostly blogs. Remember when we all needed printed portfolios? Or when motion designers needed DVDs or even VHS show reels? I still like that. I know that’s gone completely out the window, but the ideas that went into the creation of those kinds of portfolios shouldn’t have changed. I want to look at a portfolio. If you want to also have a blog, fine have a blog. But they should be two separate products under your own brand. Tronic does that well. I can go to the website and see their body of work. I can see studio updates. If I want to I can get more personal by following Vivian on Twitter.
Again, really nice website, easy to get around, loads fast. My only concern is the Flash and lack of alternate content (btw, I love Flash, if you follow me you’d know that) and was it needed for this project? Well done guys. Looking forward to more work.
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