Tuesday, September 23, 2008

not that they need my puny endorsement

...but Anthropologie's latest web catalogue is pretty cool!

It's actually a pretty simple design (Flash, I think, and probably lots of code that I don't know anything about) but the art direction (layers of photos a la David Hockney) makes it look way more complicated with a nice sense of depth. Basically, the site travels in a linear fashion from left to right (or vice versa) almost as if you are viewing a map close up with a spyglass, if that makes sense. You can skip to the different sections by clicking on the numbers at top and the page skims past till you hit the desired location. Just try it, it's far more intuitive than my poor description is making it out to be.

I like how they thoughtfully save your place on the site when you move in for a closer look at the products. In other web-catalogues, you can click say on a blouse to get the detailed information (description, price, fabric content, available colors/sizes, etc) but when you click to get back to the main catalogue, the website always spits you out back to the beginning. And depending on how quick your computer or web connection is, it might take you a minute or longer to get back to the page you were on by having to "flip" through those pages all over again. With this one, you can click on one of the black buttons, a window opens up to reveal the details and then you can close that window and you are back to where you were when you first requested the details. Awesome.

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