Critique this website

I was looking at this site and I feel it looks very of its time (now? or does that mean this look has already passed)

Thinking about how some things suddenly look dated or bad and then well what about things from today, how they'll date, what will seem bad about them

Or just, how does this site look to you - whats good about it? whats bad about it?

http://geckotree.co.uk/

or a site with a similar look/feel

it looks like the cat's in a bucket so how do you see its tail?

you probably should start over from scratch. sorry :(

the site's name is about geckos but that's a cat

the site's name is about geckos but that's a cat

http://geckotree.co.uk/assets/images/rob.jpg

everything curves = cuet/tweeness = of its moment maybe 2 to 3 years ago

bring on the new brutalism

I might have been better off picking a site that was finished rather than this one, but this is the one that prompted thoughts of future datedness, and when/how that would happen

similar aesthetic to things like Glitch which feels part of a dying moment already

now THAT'S a cat xp

"Made with ♥ in the UK" - FUCK OFF

everything curves = cuet/tweeness = of its moment maybe 2 to 3 years ago

feels part of a dying moment already

right! i dont pay enough attention to notice when things have changed. So looking back from the future is this site "so 2014" or "so 2011" or something else?

if this style is dying....then what killed it and sat in its place?

i don't think i could point to dominant trends that are replacing this, so much as the fact that this style is being identified, critiqued, eye-rolled at. it feels very tied into the faux-friendly cutesiness that the Innocent Smoothies thread has been dissecting. and as i said, a bunch of games/sites that have gone under already.

so i'm saying it's of a passing moment more because that moment is already at saturation point more than because the newness has taken over yet

think of it like genre artists that come along just as received wisdom is starting to declare that particular genre over

nb i'm saying this with a deadened aesthetic brain-ache and no belief in the necessity of progress/fashion as such

Would it still be cutesy without the cat? eg the fonts, colours etc?

Obviously everything becomes dated but its interesting to me which bits would be the bits eye-rolled at

I suppose the problem is the dominance of the cat makes it harder to critique the rest.

"Made with ♥ in the UK"

"Hey, I'm Ralph... nice to meet you."

^ these bits and the fonts and the icons etc.

"it just so happens, we are brothers. What are the chances 'eh."

and you need someone to proofread for you.

e.g. you don't how to use commas or apostrophes properly, which is true of most designers, but it doesn't look good and is easily fixed

^ these bits and the fonts and the icons etc.

― Eyeball Kicks, Monday, June 9, 2014 6:14 AM

Im definitely more interested in the fonts/visual stuff than the words themselves (I didn't even read the words!)

After the revolution, shock collars for comma splice infractions.

god just do a job and put the shit up does everything have to be an INTIMATE EXPERIENCE now

Who is the target audience? If it's crafts shops and coffeehouses, maybe twee works. It did seem a little patronizing to me, but eh, that happens to me pretty easily anyway.

The actual architecture of the site gets a B-. The whole longread/tumblr style of paging down and down and down is happening right now. It's better than frames, but I'm not entirely convinced of its staying power yet. There were parts of the website that were confusing or took me down the right path: I wanted to click on the images of the font icon monitor, but those didn't go anywhere. LIkewise, when I clicked on Contact to see what their address or phone number was, it just triggered my Thunderbird to open with an email addressed.

Too bad dude didn't walk past a State Farm office every morning, could've had a talking pig.

The whole longread/tumblr style of paging down and down and down is happening right now

Do you mean that endless scrolling thing? I really dislike that in tumblr/flickr - I lose my sense of orientation and start to feel seasick!

That, to a degree, but even things with an end being contained to one page that just keeps dropping.

I like it better than 10 paragraph breaks and a new page, but it can be overdone.

Just think, ILX has been ahead of this trend for almost 15 years.

hmm but with ILX its not endless because it just shows the last 50 posts?

Have you got an example of a site that does what you say in a good way?

This is an amazing example. The caveat is that this is one story, not the whole website like this, but the design is what we're talking about here, right? Endless scrolling, graphics reacting to how far down you've come, transparent header boxes, etc.

I would honestly just remove the animals and replace them with something else, even in the same style. But the cutesy roundness of the icons on top of the smiling animals is just too much.

I liked the site, mostly! What interested me tho was how "of now" it struck me visually, and how that would date, which parts would look bad in the future. ILX seemed a good place to ask for negative opinions

I like the colours and fonts - and the roundedness, tho I'm sure that's exactly what will look dated. The 70s log cabin meets play school feel

I didnt like the blurb, though I find that kind of writing insincere rather than twee per se. Didn't mind the cat, wondered what they should have had instead

Opinion seems to be overwhelmingly negative on every aspect, so - can this style be done well? Better examples?

that style would be fine depending on purpose and audience i think - and there's nothing wrong with a thing being dateable, just acknowledging that it will date, perhaps i have a problem with trying to be "now" in the first place, perhaps "now" is always inevitably "then" once the question is asked

Well ive no idea if its trying to be now or it just "is", on like a subconcious level

Yes of course now is inherently a future then, logically, but the actual feeling of that, i dont think comes until well after the moment has passed. and it doesnt always...those fliptop mobile phones from from 2004 seem much more dated than mobile phones from 1998, partly because the size for late 90s phones seemed more 'right'

I think sites like this may date more conceptually than visually. The prospect of this visual style dating doesn't feel a big deal due to how clean and clear it is. There barely is a style (and even less substance). But smaller businesses may rely less and less on their own websites as a place to draw an audience and customers rather than a small network of social media sites and commercial frameworks. No true individuality to speak of, only a contemporary standard being adhered to.

For sure - the aspects we think will date something might not be the aspects that end up doing so at all

what really pisses me off? icons. just give me a list of words to click on.

( this has no bearing on the datedness or not of the website in question but fuck is it annoying when you can't find the thing you want just because some UI twat has decided that hieroglyphs of their own designing are somehow easier to understand than words in English)

...but Kev is experienced in icon design...

http://serialpodcast.org/

how about this one?