whos we, deepcode, flashlevel, theory7, and a huge bunch of 'unknowns' so to speak... they give me much more inspiration to advance my skills than any other design houses/people.
i used to be inspired by 2A but the whole techno 'hey look at me, im in the future' look has been done to death.
i thought they would have moved on rather than going back to a badly done atari game interface.
its really got to me how they have just bashed the sites graphics together wihtout any thought to the composition of the whole website.
i know a hell of a lot of work has gone into it. and im not saying i dont like thier site.
but so many errors?? why?
they have been working on this for ages, surely it wouldnt have taken long for the art editor to have run through the site and spotted the very apparent mistakes.
putting tm everywhere is also wrong, its falsly claiming sections to be trade marks of that company.
i dont think so.
oh well. theres only so much that can be said about a poor design... back end advanced or not, poor design is poor design.
and for a company to be so relaxed on the details is pretty shocking... more shocking than the actually launch.
thats all i can say about them really. not particularly interested in viewing the site again. doesnt make me feel welcome enough.
and i doubt there will be very many 'rips' at all.
its odd though, considering each individual deisgners sites are pretty amayzing, especially pixel ranger. but check out the other designers as well.
well thought out design.
maybe the team just hasnt clickerd together on this one !
It's odd really, i've sat here, reading this thread over the last few days and have been thinking..........
Most people in this thread have been really critical of the new site, and i've thought "God, most people on here couldn't have done something anywhere near as good"
BUT
Then I think down to the fact that 2A PROCLAIM to be:
"The Future", "The Best", "The most advanced" etc etc.......
Well, as far as i'm concerned, if you proclaim things like that, then you are be open to critisicm and acclaim from all levels.
In my eyes, the coolest site is one that is FAST, works perfectly on MY pc, provides ME with the best experience, engages ME in it, makes ME want to explore, doesn't confuse or baffle ME........ are you seeing where i'm going?
The new site kills my pc at home, the animations run so slowly that it makes it look crap - That's on a 900mhz P3 with 128mb ram - not the fastest pc, but perfectly adequate for WEB browsing - I think that element has been forgotten about with this new site - that it is 'JUST A WEBSITE' - not a game interface or a dvd.
It's a shame, it also is too large to fit into 1024 x 768 resolution - WHAT? Web stats show that still, about 40% of all web users are STILL running at 800 x 600, then a large percentage of the rest are running only at 1024 x 768, so this site only caters properly for about 5% of the web market. Massive oversite in my opinion.
I agree about the size issue - it does seem a bit of an oversight and there are other things which have left 2A open to a bit of justified criticism, however I do feel a lot of what's been said in this thread has been hyper critical and at times a bit like a feeding frenzy.
The site is decent, but not great. Certainly not revolutionary in any way. I'd be happy if I designed it...but I was expecting more from 2Advanced. I hate the colors. And I don't understand why they chose that resolution. Maybe a couple of the 2A guys will pop in here and answer some of our questions after they fix the "problems" they've encountered since the launch of Prophecy.
Personally, I liked ver. 3 much better. Then again, I haven't even been able to access all of the new stuff yet. Maybe my opinions will change....but I doubt it.
Of course they are not finished from a business point of view (not yet at least), but now there are many other sites better and MORE ADVANCED than this V4, thats all...
They overhyped it themselves as being the "future"! What future, WELCOME TO 1996 2A team!
Originally posted by tom314 And discussions about style/colors etc. don't matter. The style is chosen, is continued from previous versions and is put out excellent.
I can't say the style from V3 is continued in V4. I like both styles, but V3 is more EJ style... V4 looks like (and is, I almost certainly know) someone elses. I think the style we all know from Eric Jordan is not shown in V4, and that dissapointing, because many people (including me) loved that clean-how-the-hell-does-he-do-that-EJ-style.
Also, on the old V3 site - even when you were waiting for the flash to load, you'd see an animation of some sort, now I get this (see attached) for over a minute, whilst I wait for the site to load up! Doesn't look too good!
Oh now we're bashing the techno-future look? That's the main drive of 2A, that's their thing. It's been done to death because it is the future of things. Look at your new cell phones and tv's and DVD players, they ALL have that look. Hell, even cars are going in that direction.
Sometimes I think people pick things apart just to pick at them.
Oh yeah, and the whole thing someone wrote about site resolution and speed etc. I think with less people trying to access it (or maybe they did some backend tweaks) the site is running fine now as far as load times and site animation. I looked at it over a dial up today and it's fine. As far as site resolution and "it's not a DVD" stuff ... 2A has repeatedly said they're designing for high end people (cable, dsl modems) with good eyesite (the 8point text) in their 20's - early 40's (future orientation). They're NOT designing a site for Joe Schmoe public, it's for 2 audiences: 1) Multi-million dollar companies that can afford their design fees (therefore, they have DSL, cable and T1 lines to view websites on) and 2) US, the other designers out there who will sit through a minute long loading screen to see the eyecandy.
2A did not do V4 for Joe Schmoe public. Their portfolio is mostly for large businesses who spend lots of cash and have high end systems with CLIENTS who spend lots of cash and have high end systems. As much as a website should cater to the lowest common system, certain niche's require a bit more.
Originally posted by villain2 Oh now we're bashing the techno-future look? That's the main drive of 2A, that's their thing. It's been done to death because it is the future of things. Look at your new cell phones and tv's and DVD players, they ALL have that look. Hell, even cars are going in that direction.
Sometimes I think people pick things apart just to pick at them.
Oh yeah, and the whole thing someone wrote about site resolution and speed etc. I think with less people trying to access it (or maybe they did some backend tweaks) the site is running fine now as far as load times and site animation. I looked at it over a dial up today and it's fine. As far as site resolution and "it's not a DVD" stuff ... 2A has repeatedly said they're designing for high end people (cable, dsl modems) with good eyesite (the 8point text) in their 20's - early 40's (future orientation). They're NOT designing a site for Joe Schmoe public, it's for 2 audiences: 1) Multi-million dollar companies that can afford their design fees (therefore, they have DSL, cable and T1 lines to view websites on) and 2) US, the other designers out there who will sit through a minute long loading screen to see the eyecandy.
2A did not do V4 for Joe Schmoe public. Their portfolio is mostly for large businesses who spend lots of cash and have high end systems with CLIENTS who spend lots of cash and have high end systems. As much as a website should cater to the lowest common system, certain niche's require a bit more.
It's tough to say that 2a didn't target "Joe Schmoe" public at all - if that wasn't their goal, then why hold Neverrain? Neverrain certainly wasn't for 2advanced's clients...
Neverrain was a rave. As an ex-raver, I know ravers could care less if they ever heard of 2A, Christopher Lawrence was spinning and I would have gone to hear him spin if I lived in CA.
They probably promoted it in the area via fliers etc. etc. There were probably more ravers there than industry-types.
I think with version 3, 2advanced launched a design frenzy because people had never seen anything like it in the mainstream yet. This version 4 site is really awesome, but won't receive the same respect, because while 2Advanced has spent their year designing primarily for clients, others like Shane, Dash, Masa and Nevil have spent more time developing their own portfolio websites. The truth is that if this version came out last year you all would have been blown away. The truth, also, is that I have seen Flashlevel websites that are more creatively designed and more user friendly than Prophecy. This does not, however, change the fact that 2Advanced is one of the top design studios and I am really looking forward to where they take us in 2004 and beyond.
Also, for the record...2Advanced is the first site I know of to take this approach when designing the size (height and width) of their site. Now they hold the crown as the first to do this. In three years, when it is standard to have sites 1000 pixels wide, 2Advanced will have already done this. Was it a bad decision to do this early? Well, for those with small monitors and low resolution settings, sure. But for their client base, I think it's just fine. This is what 2A does...they innovate. And they sure have done some more of that with this version.
Now we are calling 2Adv. innovators for simply setting their .swf size to 1000 pixels. Can we be more ridiculous.
For your info, there are many sites which target 1024 x 768 res. and use 1000 pixels for their width ( actually it's more like 970-990 which is what 2a uses) Even there they are behind at least a year.
Personally I think it's stupid because most of the clients and visitors still use 800 x 600
Gmunk had his sites set at 1200 wide 4 years ago.
Anyway, like most their sites it doesn't look bad, but it's more of the same Gmunk, Virl, Designers Republic rip-off which has been around since mid-late nineties. This v.4 looks like Gmunk of 2 versions ago, they probably though we forgot about it. Fonts look amateurish.
They should just hire Gmunk , pay him a lot of money and then they could officialy call it their style.
I have to comment on their copy, which is something I noticed a long time ago. This guy ( or guys ) have the stupidest and most pretenteous copy ever seen on the web. Sounds like they are mentally impaired. What was the video reel all about? Dumb and dull.
You'd think that with 20 designers one could come up with something creative.
fishpiracy 
