7.12.08







Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is a "community of free thinkers and artistic innovators" based in Philadelphia. The site has a wonderfully constant navigation bar on the top of the page (I seem to like a constant navigation system), and like pitchfork, last.fm, and a few other sites, has content sorted by category in a grid on the home page. The categories on the home page, however, are only a few of the categories in the top navigation, which makes you wonder why there aren't links to the artists or musicians in the content on the front page. Perhaps the age of mechanical reproduction has rendered the artist irrelevant (har har har). Once you go one level in on the site, for most categories you get a left column navigation. THe rollover highlight stays to show you where you are, and a header in the content tells you (in case it wasn't obvious). This works for all of the categories except for "Shop Online." I'm not sure if that's intentional or just an accident. There isn't any obvious hierarchy, though "Shop Online" is the first button in the row. The links don't change once they've been clicked on, and the way to get back home is to click on the main banner at the top. The site's architecture isn't too deep– in the store section you can go from store to categories in the store to products in the categories, but that's about as deep as it goes. The look doesn't ever change substantially. Like with Pitchfork, TMT, and ReFormSchool, the architecture isn't flat, but it's not far off. It only takes a few clicks to get from one place to another. Unfortunately, a few of the pages seem to be broken, and I'm not sure that the site is really up and running yet.
The typographic hierarchy is pretty apparent. There is one main font for the headlines and the main banner, and the clickable text is all the same blue. The size changes based on whether there ought to be more or less emphasis placed on the text, and navigation labels are clear, even if they don't always work. The structure of the page stays pretty similar. The main page has the top banner and three columns of content, and then the second and third level pages have a left hand navigation with center content and our constant banner. Now if only more of the links in the left hand navigation worked.... even the mailing list link is broken on most pages. Which, I would guess, is probably bad for business, especially since there is a contest with free giveaways for those who subscribe to the mailing list.
The focal point of each page is not the individual product, the individual musician or artist, but rather the over-arching concept of each category. You get this impression because well, there's a big fat picture devoted to that. The imagery is definitely pretty, and actually not over done, I don't think. There is a weird funky symbol up top that is a compass/forceps over an eye on top of a gear, but I guess that's just their logo. Otherwise, the photos are all pretty relevant, and the colors are minimal. Only three colors are really ever on a page– grey, blue, and this kind of tan beigey color. The content is more separated by lines and general placement than by color.
The overall purpose of the site is to promote the artists and musicians involved and to sell stuff that those artists and musicians make. You can't ever really search for anything. The most useful part of this site is probably the blog, which keeps you up to date on happenings in and around Philadelphia that have to do with art, or, specifically, Art in the Age.

1 comment:

Robin said...

hey caroline!
thanks for the review...looking into your concerns today. the store should be fully populated around end of day.

tell gavin. :)

~robin!