Hand-Coding Wanted for “Bad” Design
Author of this post: Nomi Altabef | About Blog Authors »
Now that the web has been around for well over a decade, most professional sites, personal sites or blogs, and in general sites with any credibility at all have a ubiquitously polished look. But lately, possibly emerging out of the low-fi, user-generated-content aesthetic, is a trend in seeking reverse-credibility through deliberately, earnestly bad design. Take as evidence the site Ogilvy Canada designed to promote HoneyComb cereal. The site, beeboy.org, is ostensibly the property of Bee Researcher Barbara Sommerville, and records her research and observation of “Bernard,” a boy raised by bees.
Fake blogs and fake personal sites are now a well-worn trick in marketing attempts (Coke, for example?) but the striking thing about the design of beeboy.org is just how far it goes to make it look like it was done by a design-impaired bee scientist, rather than an ad agency.
April 10th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
I do agree that we do need to take a step back. But how far? I think the “beeboy” site is a deliberate example of a lot of sites still out there with the clipart mailbox. Also the Levi site mentioned it terrible. There is no way I would even stay on the site. It appears to scroll side to side (yet does not allow it) and the navigation is confusing to say the least. I have no idea on what they want me to do, or how to access anything useful.
If this is the way design should go, I want no part of it. I too do not like the greasy look of web2.0 but please don’t go back to far.
April 23rd, 2007 at 7:09 pm
“there are so many web templates and publishing aids available now that it is actually very difficult to create a site like this one unless you can make HTML code by hand.”
what a hoot!…one look at the code suggests it was put together using something akin to dreamweaver…code like this is very easy to output with ‘publishing aids’…
no self-respecting, professional hand-coder would output code as atrocious as this…hand-coding is to be esteemed and aspired to…it helps you learn html code better…oh, and web developers with a propensity for semantic html and web standards would never output code like this either…
November 5th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Hi Im actually beeboy From ogilvy and thats me on the internet and commercial and I’d just like to prove that to you by saying there will be a new commercial in January or Febuary