This is where the MMemo items that you missed go,
when the glue dries and they fall of the noticeboard
The review below was up for a few days and as usual, I replied to the press release that notified me of the site, with an email note that it was mentioned on MM. There was an immediate email reply that is also included below with my answer. Was I just being an opinionated arsehole or is this what you expect when you come to MM? Add a comment in our forumm.
No, don't adjust your browser, that's really how bad the text looks like on this new web site to promote the 1997 Melbourne Fashion Festival. Unfortunately it doesn't get any better throughout the entire site. There's clunky icons, no page design, no aliasing on text graphics, it's a real mess. Which is a pity because someone has put a lot of time into getting this content together, there's an exhaustive links page for example, to all things fashionable (and better designed). The Festival offers all kinds of treats, guests and fashion-as-culture shows. British writer, photographer and critic Ted Polhemus, has an exhibition at The Karyn Lovegrove Gallery in South Yarra, called Style Surfing (based on the photographs in his book Style Surfing - What to Wear in the 3rd Millennium, Thames & Hudson), and he is doing the big 'public lecture' on Saturday 22 Feb.
A web site is an ideal way to keep up with an event such as this, but the sponsors must be squirming with embarrassment at this one. The overall impression of the site is amateurish and old fashioned, surely not how the fashion industry would see themselves. The Festival opened Monday night, so quick guys, swallow that pride and get a designer.
Subject:
Re: Festival site mentioned in MMOnline
Date:
20 Feb 97 01:18:35 EST
From:
Heath Kelly <100357.1511@CompuServe.COM>
To:
Fred Harden <fred@mm.com.au>
Dear Fred
If that site of yours is supposed to be some sort of paragon of design virtues
then our collective opinion is that your taste is in your arse.
Your attitude is typical of what is desperately wrong with many Web authors, you are enamored with the latest toys but demonstrate an arrogant attitude in regards to the general public who may not be running current browsers.
We realise that if we had heaps of time and money we could cater for both, but this site was built on a small and definitely not open ended sponsorship, ( we do not have the massive financial muscle of the Murdoch organisation behind us like you do ) and our priorities were on content as the purpose of the site is to be a utilitarian one of information dissemination about the festival, and NOT to wank around with trying to impress some sort of cyber peer group. Further more a lot of our content ( such as the logo that you seem to have some sort of problem with ) was done by one of Australia's leading graphic designers.
We dont have any choice in the usage of the logo that you chose to particularly vilify for reasons that were not entirely clear, ( It is dictated by the Board of Directors of the festival ). Given that we HAD to use it, we worked hard to minimise its file size so that we could maximise the speed that people go through the site. This resulted in graphics that are not as sharp as possible, but achieved the speed we were after, which is once again not something that will impress the cyber peer group, but will make the end users much happier.
Our " Press Release's" were done by one of our guys that is not too experienced in Winfax, and hence we apologize for the missing graphics, and shit layout , ( it was only uncovered AFTER they were sent out ) however the content was written by us in a manner that we were hoping would cut through the many releases you
people probably get every day.
We were not able to afford the usual "PR" people that are experienced in sucking up to you press blokes, plus we had to provide information in our "release" that would be of use to the fashion media, the general media, and the computer media. Our priority was to come up with points of difference between our site and the millions of other sites in the world, and thus hopefully gain a mention as opposed to being chucked in the bin, therefore get more publicity for the site.
The Melbourne Fashion Festival is a NON PROFIT organisation, that initially had no interest whatsoever in doing a Web Site, and only changed their mind when a small sponsorship was made available.
It is very hard to get many people in the fashion industry interested in Web sites, let alone sites designed to serve the industry as a whole that cuts across all facets of the industry rather than serving the needs of an individual company or industry section ( the Melbourne Fashion Festival Board Members cover small designers, education, footwear, retail, and manufacturing )
Your vindictive crap has now made the sponsor think twice about keeping the site going.
Good One Fred
and my reply
Hang on Heath,
I understand how tough it is, I do my own website.
It's not Murdoch Magazines. Just me.
They own the name but it's my labour of love and I do it to with my own money or lack of it. The comments are all mine and my name is all over it so it's not someone hiding behind an organisation with 'massive financial muscle'.
I certainly don't consider myself 'some sort of paragon of design virtues, I don't have an art director to do the MM pages and that's why I keep them simple. I despair sometimes as to how plain it looks.
As an editor, and web master on some commercial projects, I've been lucky enough to have worked with some of Australia's top print designers, and some really good web ones. I wouldn't even have considered starting a site like yours without one.
>Your attitude is typical of what is desperately wrong with many Web authors, you
>are enamored with the latest toys but demonstrate an arrogant attitude in
>regards to the general public who may not be running current browsers.
Sorry, but you can't use that as an excuse for bad taste. Bet you didn't check what your site looks like in Lynx? Surely there's no point in a fashion website optimised for text browsers? Look at your server log and see what browsers people are using and design accordingly.
Have you seen the Microsoft Network site lately? I know that anyone can look great with that much money and talent, but there's not a 'latest toy' there that you couldn't use, or a plug-in that's not available 'to the general public who may not be running current browsers.'
Small fast loading graphics don't have to look like yours, try turning anti-aliasing on, it might make the GIFs a 1k or so bigger but they'll look better, especially the title graphic. If you must use a black background then make the text colours work. Grey is easier to read. It's a truism that reversed type is more difficult to read. See http://www.fray.com for an example of how it could look.
Then indent the margins, it's easier to read narrower columns and add some HSPACE tags to the pictures. Getting rid of those drawings was a great start.
As for those elitist 'cyber peer groups', who do you think the audience for your site is? Surely your target market will be people in the industry, those interested in being part of it, or consumers of its style and fashion products?
If you really wanted to be 'utilitarian' and reach the people, you should have done a street zine rather than an elitist web site. Rough graphics are part of the charm there. Even though the fashion industry is online savvy, there's many more who don't have a PC and modem. They read fashion mags.
>Your vindictive crap has now made the sponsor think twice about keeping the site
going.
Vindictive? Look it up, it means something different then a review in an online magazine suggesting that good content was being wasted with amateurish design and badly created graphics.
I'm sorry your sponsor has second thoughts but I'd suggest that it's got nothing to do with my comment and a lot to do with a lack of professionalism. Stick your head up amongst the big guys and sorry, you get the same flack as they do. None of the people on the list of links on your site, would approach a new web site without the same kind of design and style they demand in their own print and tv promotion.
I don't want to see you Dead on the Web, if I can help by suggesting a designer for next year or is some other way, I'd be happy to.
I'm happy to carry the 'discussion' online in the MM Forumm if you want a public platform.
Fred.
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