http://www.mcsaatchi.com/
This is a classic exercise in design poncery. Objects fly around, links are unlabelled, it’s difficult to navigate and you need four different plug-ins to make everything work. In fact, this site is so design-laden that it crashes Netscape 4.0 as soon as you enter the URL. However, for all the complaints that websites like this are pretentious, obtuse and difficult to use, the fact remains that they look good. And that’s enough (he says in a polemical sort of way).
For example, should you go to this site to find a piece of information such as a phone number or name you will be extremely frustrated to find that flapping bits of golden squares have to be chased around the screen in order to access the different areas of the site. These golden squares, however, are not labelled with the section they lead to until you grab hold of them with your ‘hand’. Very confusing. To bring up the labels and stop the squares whirling around your monitor you must click on a virtually invisible ‘help’ link hiding at the bottom of the page. There is no back control which means you may find yourself stranded on a dark page somewhere without passage back to the safe haven of the homepage. To return to previous screens you have to seek out another virtually invisible link which illuminates as your pointer passes over it.
If you’re not after specific information, though, the M&C Saatchi site is quite good fun to have a poke around; it’s a challenge to work out how everything works. It is not the case, however, that there’s nothing of any substance on the site. There are plenty of videos, quotes, vox pops, ad clips, animations and client information to flesh out the different areas hidden inside the golden squares. Also, despite the tedium of downloading them, the plug-ins are put to very good use, employed where appropriate rather than all over the shop. It’s also surprisingly quick to download all the animations and the like; a lot of sites grind to a halt under the weight of the Shockwaves.
Users of this site ought to beware of some heavily pretentious advertising philosophies being thrown around. M&C Saatchi extols the virtues of what it calls the six principles of advertising. The linchpin of these principles is what M&C calls ‘The Brutal Simplicity Of Thought’. In their ad campaign for Whiskas this maxim was applied to the brief to come up with the marketing revelation that cats are unpredictable (mine wasn’t, it just ate and slept) and that Whiskas understands cats. The Brutal Simplicity Of Thought at work.
Nevertheless, if you never mind all the Zen And The Art Of Advertising stuff, this is a good, art and design-led website.
Reviewer: Scott Billings
