Another July deadline was completing the redesign of the SYSTEMarchitects.net website before the opening of the Home Delivery exhibit at MoMA on July 17th. This was an exciting challenge. Jeremy Edmiston is a talented architect, who does brilliant work and is the principle of SYSTEMarchitects LIc. Several factors fascinated me about this assignment. First, I graduated from the University of Minnesota with a major in architecture and worked for a number of architects in Minneapolis before I was sidetracked by the other muses. But my design foundation was most certainly laid back then. My professors used to say that architecture is the mother of all arts. Let’s just say that it is a “culture” I am familiar with and love. This was a wonderful opportunity to reacquaint myself while working with a visionary in the field.
Second, Jeremy had unique demands. He showed me some sites that he liked and told me he wanted his site to be “an experience.” This would be a test of my design methods. Generally, my approach to site design is that the viewer should be able access the content easily, quickly and know the extent of the site upon arrival. When I am on the web, I don’t expect to spend more than five minutes at a site and I think most readers have the same expectations. This is what makes the internet so different from print. You don’t curl up with your computer. Reading a book, a magazine or the newspaper is a much different experience. Do you agree? (Kismet: This morning’s NY Times arrived with an article on just this topic.)
Most clients agree when I make this argument. They do not want animation, music or waiting for graphics to load–often referred to as “bells and whistles.” Most architectural sites are like that, minimal or you could say, International Style in design. But this was where Jeremy was different. He understood my approach but wanted a site that changes the rules. His architecture does this: it challenges your expectations with innovation. I wanted to make a site that reflected this.
Using a Flash 3D navigation, I began this prototype. There are many things I love about Flash but it has its liabilities too. First, it is not accessible to search engines. ActionScript coding is tedious and can be buggy on a Mac. I also felt that this might be beyond that capabilities of whomever took over the site once I was finished–probably an architectural student on staff.
Some day I will have to write about my friend (and mentor) Wusamah Halimun–aka Uzi–because when Uzi told me that “Flash is Dead,” I had to take notice. He bases that statement on articles and comments that Steve Jobs and Apple are not including Flash in their future plans. Long story short, I think there is a movement away from Flash. I have come to believe that learning advanced CSS and JavaScript UI’s is a better use of my time.
And then I found Gerard Ferrandez’s site Interactive DOM Scripting – DHTML.