New Site, New Vision

In my last post, I spoke of the website redesign for Art Trap Productions, the site you are reading this now presumably. If you were already familiar with the site previously, you may see the difference comparably like night and day. Most likely this site today being the "day" in that phrase.

Yes, the strong difference between what was and what is now, is as you may have guessed intentional. It was time for a change and one that is a bit cleaner and streamlined than what was before. There will be more content here (although as I write this now, this may not be the case since so much of the previous content has yet to brought over to the new site yet), and with the increased content, keeping it organized and reachable is essential.

Going with a mostly white background as opposed to the black previously also helps with the clarity and the 'clean look' the new site is aiming in with the new redesign.

With that being said, one can go too far in scaling down and "whitening" of a website. When Google originally appeared on the web, it was (and still is for the most part) revolutionary. No other search engine had such as clean and simple interface at that time. For that matter most websites in general were not as 'clean and simple' either. People flocked to Google in part because it was clean and unobtrusive (not to mention it found the results you were looking for in your search quest).

But unfortunately, like with many successes, it breeds many imitators. Now so many other websites are trying to mimic the Google's original clean and simple interface. Case in point would be the popular photo sharing website, Flickr. I know I should be using the site, and perhaps I will soon. But up until now, I have been turned off by their interface design or lack of design. I find it too simple and clean. Does it at least allow users to change the color scheme of how the site is represented once they log in with an account? It just seems to be missing something.

Now, a site can go the complete opposite way as well of course. Just look at the dreadful interface, if you can it an interface that MySpace uses. For years I have been saying it is the worse interface design out there. It's dreadful. I've finally opened an account there (yes, hell did indeed freeze over) just so I can better network with people in these gated communities such as MySpace and Facebook. But comparing these to 'social networking' sites in design is also like 'night and day'... I find Facebook far more intuitive to use and it is much easier on the eyes than the intense horrid ad laden make up that ravages throughout MySpace.

This new revised ATP site will continue to grow slowly over time. The content from the previous site what little there was, will migrate its way here to the new site in time. Chiefly, at the time I write this, there is very little representation of art and media here. All the imagery in the headers of each page comes from my camera. I suspect that will change and grow over time as well here on the site.

As stated in my previous post, this new version of the ATP site will serve as my hub on the net. Since my presence and work can be found across many sites, it is my hope that everything will be linked to it from here and this will be the starting point to my presence on the net as well as informing you of new projects and plans for ATP.

It's a new site, a new vision.