Re:The History of the Dot Com Era
by noduerme on Monday July 19, 2021 @07:38AM
(#27881451)
Just for the hell of it because I can't wind down tonight, here's a fun story from 1998.
The "web shop" I worked for got a contract with a company I believe was called Sansom Street Associates. They controlled the Gap, Old Navy, and the Mendocino Redwood Co. The last of which we were tasked with designing a website for.
It quickly became known in the office the MRC was in the business of chopping down old-growth redwood forests. They wanted a website that looked eco-friendly for this purpose. I was one of the two designers on the job. We built a prototype and were told in no uncertain terms that it was too glossy, too slick. This is 1998. We're dealing in <img> tags and every mockup has to be set with table slices in photoshop with rollovers as a second layer.
Too glossy? Yes. They wanted it to look more like it was designed by a high school student. Lower the images to dithered 256-color GIFs. Get rid of the font and color choices. Everything should be in random fonts.
I remember being told, "they just want some website where the hippies can dump their emails into a black hole".
Then we got wind that this company had paid our bosses something over $150k up front for this simple website job - downgrade included. At that point it became toxic among the designers.
What's funny is, I bet MRC paid triple that for the stupid site they have now, because money means nothing to them. But I'd never work for them again in this or any other lifetime. /rant.
The "web shop" I worked for got a contract with a company I believe was called Sansom Street Associates. They controlled the Gap, Old Navy, and the Mendocino Redwood Co. The last of which we were tasked with designing a website for.
It quickly became known in the office the MRC was in the business of chopping down old-growth redwood forests. They wanted a website that looked eco-friendly for this purpose. I was one of the two designers on the job. We built a prototype and were told in no uncertain terms that it was too glossy, too slick. This is 1998. We're dealing in <img> tags and every mockup has to be set with table slices in photoshop with rollovers as a second layer.
Too glossy? Yes. They wanted it to look more like it was designed by a high school student. Lower the images to dithered 256-color GIFs. Get rid of the font and color choices. Everything should be in random fonts.
I remember being told, "they just want some website where the hippies can dump their emails into a black hole".
Then we got wind that this company had paid our bosses something over $150k up front for this simple website job - downgrade included. At that point it became toxic among the designers.
What's funny is, I bet MRC paid triple that for the stupid site they have now, because money means nothing to them. But I'd never work for them again in this or any other lifetime. /rant.