Yes, I've nagged about it in the past. Here, here, and of course here, just to name a few.
But the Boise Advertising Federation finally has a new website up and running, with a great deal more content that has been on the site for the past couple of years (not hard to do, but hey, I'm trying to be nice here). It even has some familiar headlines on the homepage.
The BAF site was developed by the crew over at Drake Cooper, and they deserve some recognition for the time and effort that they put into it.
If you haven't already, check out the new site: http://www.boiseadfed.org/. Of course, comments about the site are welcome here, as long as they stay somewhat on topic...
Technorati tags: boise advertising federation, baf, drake cooper
Thursday, May 08, 2008
A new website for the Boise Advertising Federation
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
14 comments:
THAT SITE BLOWS, I'M SORRY
Anonymous:
Would you be willing to give something more constructive? What don't you like about the website? What would you like to see/not see? Can you give some examples of sites that you consider "good"?
JOSH:
For being a site showcasing the advertising companies in the area it it is graphically blah. I don't think it represents the advertising agencies that are in the Boise area at all. I mean the information is updated and that is great but just not impressed at all by the overall feel and design of this. It feels like 1995, and the designer just figured out how to add a flash header and footer. As far as I am concerned this is a leak in the wrong direction.
How about some of these sites:
www.apple.com
http://www.ted.com/
http://www.checklandkindleysides.com/
http://www.sony.com/index.php
http://www.patagonia.com/web/us/footprint/index.jsp
http://www.adfed.org/
http://www.adclubseattle.com/
Tell me something you like about this. It reminds me of Eminem's "Puke"
Hey it is nice that somebody did something but I find it to be just ok. Companies that inspire? What the hell is that? An ad? I'm confused. My guess is they are a client of drake. Feels like a lot of build up for something that is just ok. Disappointing since it took so long to go live. I just feel good about it. Arent annonymous comments great?
I think DC went a little overboard with the Flash headers and footers, too. I suppose it's a nice touch, but it's really distracting and unoriginal. That said, I don't think the overuse of migraine-inducing flash bits are the site's main problem: I think they jumped the gun and didn't invest any type into the underpinnings of the site, or its architecture. What are main areas of the site? A calendar here and a blog post there don't seem to exemplify the site's main purpose. Although I see where both elements are useful in same cases, their execution in this particular context don't work. It's supposed to represent the Idaho Ad Agency community, right? Why not run with that approach in your archtecture..."a community-driven" site. Lastly: please, PLEASE ditch the flash pixy dust....it is reminiscent of the Windows Vista campaign.
wow...welcome to boise...where no one cares about online image. Blah
Okay so....not that my opinion matters, but this site really needs some help. There is soo much opportunity with the Boise Ad Fed's branding. You can go waaay above and beyond with this project. I think that it was one of those "hey we just need a site. We dont care how crappy it looks - it just has to work" I'm so sick of the lack of polish going into webdesign in Boise. Its like no one cares. There are a select few companies here that really know what they are doing. I'm not going to mention any of them of course...but whoever designed this one...isn't one of them. I give it a 4/10. Lets make an effort to get every site designed in Boise to get on the FWA or CSS Mania as these are the galleries for the best sites in the world. C'mon Boise! We can do it.
The site is going to be a very useful tool to the area agencies. The main goal is the functionality on this site and I feel that it does that job very well. However on the design side of things I feel that it looks as though it was done as a favor. It looks like a NFP job. Which is fine. I can understand not breaking your neck over a job you're not getting paid for. That makes complete logical sense. I would have to say that as the Boise Advertising Industry we should come together and really give the Boise Ad Fed something that can really showcase what the group is about. Obviously this would be a NFP job, but I'm willing to put my skills to the challenge. I'm not even a member LOL! Anyways this just looks to me like a great opportunity to showcase what Boise is capable of. I really like what Ad Club Seattle has done with their site. It looks nice. Anyways that would be my input on the project as a whole.
Let's remember that this site is all done by volunteers who have full-time (and more) advertising day jobs. I am glad Boise's advertising industry will finally have a web presence.
The only thing that bugs me about the site is the motion graphics on every page. They make me dizzy.
First of all, this is truly great criticism. Anonymous or not, you have been heard. Thanks. I think it is apparent that this project was rushed, there was very little excitement for us to work on it, and we just kind of threw it together. It may have appeared to have taken awhile to develop, but it's been quietly sitting on our dev server for the last couple of months.
I do agree with Josh that It does suck getting bashed over a project (non-paid or otherwise) that was thrown in your lap. A project that other BAF members have been "too busy" to tackle. Having said that, we agreed to help when we could and we will continue to do so.
The consensus is that the design is lame. Noted. The header and footer were meant to be swapped out every so often by more experienced and creative designers of the BAF. We just didn't have time to announce this between all the anonymous bashing. : )
So it's done, maybe a bit too half-heartedly and it shows. So now what. Who wants to design this site? Motive Media is willing to put his/her skills to the challenge. Are you? In fact, why don't we let designers submit for the next month or so and we'll post all the entries for everyone to vote on. The winner can raid the dc interactive beer fridge or something of equal or lesser value. It would be interesting to see how the talent coming out of BSU and non-BAF members stack up against the pillars of the Boise advertising industry.
Now is a great time for your voice to be heard. Ok, so pixie dust is out. How about the shared youtube and flickr accounts? Del.icio.us links: useful or not? Or does it make more sense to integrate something like friendfeed instead? I believe podcasts are in the works. Anyone willing to take the time to listen to them? Should we keep the tag clouds? Flash or no flash? Css or tables....just kidding.
So what are the urls of the FMA sites designed by Boise designers? This is not a slam, I would love to see them and I think others would as well. Sounds like a great post for the BAF site.
Anyway, contest details coming soon. Feel free to submit ideas on this post or send an email to info@boiseadfed.org.
-chad
There is a lot of focus on the look and feel of this site so far, and I think Chad's ideas to address this are great. I just want to take a second to point out some of the technology that runs this site.
We built a custom CMS system in ASP.NET 2.0. This includes a rich WYSIWYG editor, drag and drop navigation control, news and events manager, RSS Feed manger, configuration editor, user/role management and some pretty handy debugging tools and logging features. We use ASP.NET 2.0 provider model with a SQL Server database, Themes, and the content is all XML driven. We also use several of telerik's R.A.D. controls to provide a user friendly toolset in the CMS and other Admin tools.
The front-end is a CSS layout, XHTML - with some Flash (but I guess nobody likes eye candy). We use prototype.js, script.aculo.us effects, and lightwindow to achieve some rich AJAX features and UI effects.
We have also integrated several useful API's. Flickr, Google Maps, Google AJAX Search, YouTube, RSS, Del.icio.us to name a few.
Um, none of this technology was available in 1995 - so I'm not sure how comment #3 can say this this site feels like 1995. I just don't get that.
Now, this site is brand new - and the content needs to come from the BAF community. So update your profiles with some web 2.0 features, post to the BAF YouTube, Flickr, and del.icio.us accounts. This site is only as good as the work we (by we, I mean the entire BAF membership) put into it. The framework exists to make this as great or as useless as we want it. So, if you're going to criticize, make sure you've done your part to help make the site as great as it can be before you get you tell me "THAT SITE BLOWS".
We know that many of you out there waited a long time for this site to get launched. Please understand that we have been SLAMMMMMED over here at Drake Cooper with Client work (you know, the stuff that pays the bills), and we just couldn't justify putting our clients on hold to jam this thing out in December. We were also in the middle of a move, rebrand, and some other big projects when this BAF site come into the shop. OK, I'm done ranting. I'm patting myself on the back for not using any vulgar language.
--Josh McDannel
Use of "technology": B+
Design: D- (but still better than brand roots•••speaking of 1995)
Josh's hypersensitive rant: A+ (really, great rant, your irritation was tangible, I could actually feel it)
Can someone please send Josh a new skin to put over all his "technology”?
Some design direction inspiration (since you asked):
http://www.usgbc.org
http://www.adclubseattle.com (I see someone else likes this site, too)
http://www.agda.com.au
http://www.drakecooper.com (Josh, ask the designer at your shop who's responsible for this to help you out•••it's good stuff)
I know this was a donation, as Josh emphatically points out, but come on. Bill Drake can't be happy with the design. He'd never let that out of his shop if BAF was a paying client.
All that being said, Josh has obviously put in some good work on this from a programming perspective. Will a member designer please step up and help him out with the look?
drakecooper.com. yawn. boring.
BTW, FWIW, DrakeCooper.com SEO pwns. Google "Boise Ad Agency".
Post a Comment