Website: Up To 35

August 4, 20090 Comments Tagged: 35, competition, flash, Website

Up To 35 is an international design competition for students up to the age of 35, specifically for student housing. Their site is an all Flash affair (which I could rail against, but will restrain myself), but has an interesting navigation concept, and works relatively well for a site keeping all the content within one page. Let's take a look.

When you first arrive you are met by a loading graphic that builds together some text into a block while keeping you updated of the loading status. In the scheme of things, this is actually one of the nicer loading screens I have seen. The typography is neat and tidy, and laid out in a manner just interesting enough to not be plain. As a whole it is kept pretty simple which I see as a bonus.

When the site itself first loads, it is a little confusing, not only functionally, but also visually. A construction site of some description floats in the middle of the page, with words overlaid in perspective on the ground. A quick investigation reveals that the words are actually the menu - merely taking a mouseover to move and make it clear. While it is a little questionable to start in an unclear fashion, it only takes a little bit of exploration to figure out what is going on. You could certainly argue that this engages the user in the site a little, and is therefore a good thing.

Once a link is clicked the content slides out from the top of the page, overlaying the image (but not the navigation). The effect is smooth, and is an elegant way of having multiple content areas on the one page, however the type is a little small, and uses a custom scrollbar in the Flash, which is pretty hard to notice, and use.

My only other criticism would be of the text in the menu. The perspective when it is laying on the ground seems alright, but once it sits upright, it just looks a little wrong. It is certainly a far cry from the nice typography from the loading screen, and to me, it actually tears at the credibility of the design itself.

Sadly, this site starts of in good territory, and starts to lose it's way a little bit. It is by no means awful, but there a number of little things, that if improved would make for a much nicer experience.