Publicis & Hal Riney chooses form over function
The new Publicis & Hal Riney site is beautiful, innovative and simple in its language and design. The menu is hidden in an awesome graphic of a plume of red dye that floats in the center of the browser, video is used throughout the site and the copy is kept to a minimum. All good ingredients for a great site, but it still lacks the most important ingredient of all: functionality.
True, the option of webcam navigation is a nice touch. It says a lot about the company—they’re not your typical agency and they have the tools to implement cutting edge functionality. Unfortunately, to get what you really want from the site, you’re going to have to dig pretty deep. The awkward in-and-out transitions of the “liquid” menu is often confusing and abrupt. In the mouse-controlled mode, the menu items themselves are hidden until you hover over them. Each page takes more than a few seconds to load, which doesn’t necessarily cater to our impatient society. In short, extensive amount of time HR & P spends branding themselves on their site takes away from their foundation—the great work that they do. This should be their focus. After all, this is what prospective clients will judge them on.
Always choose function over form.
Sure, it’s great to have a beautiful site, but beauty comes in all forms (I love her for her personality!). Seriously though. Look at craigslist.org. Horrible, ugly, basic html that is oh-so-functional and oh-so-easy to use. Beautiful. On the agency side of things, a great example of choosing function over form is Modernista!’s redesign of their site. Well, that’s if you can even call it a redesign. Check it out. Open another window and type www.modernista.com in the address bar. You’ll arrive at their “homepage,” which, as you can see, is actually just their wikipedia page with a hovering “Modernista!” logo, menubar and message to the viewer reading “Do not be alarmed. You are viewing Modernista! through the eyes of the Web. The menu on the left is our homepage. Everything behind it is beyond our control.”
They use existing Web 2.0 social networks to share their company info and share their work. Click on “work” and you’ll find that all their print pieces are on a flickr page and all of their broadcast is on YouTube. Click “news” and you’re brought to “Google News” with search term “Modernista!” already entered in the search field. Click on “contact” and you have the choice of speaking with them via Skype or AIM, or you can click their address to bring to up a Google map pinpointing the agency.
What’s so great and beautiful about this? Modernista! is approaching their market instead of the other way around. They’re engaging rather than interrupting. The site employs technology that people already know how to use, which says a lot as far as the agency’s ability to evolve with the market goes. Most importantly, you get very easily get the information you came to get when you visit their site.
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