CMotion Image Gallery

This is another script I’ve seen very frequently, on everything from news sites to online retail stores. The scripts name—CMotion—was derived from “cursor motion” a fitting name for it. It is essentially a scrolling strip of thumbnails, but the user controls both the movement and the speed. The strip becomes a spectrum of speed, with the fastest speeds on either end. For instance, depending on how close the cursor is to the right end, it will move at increasing speeds to the right. The opposite is true for the left. If in the middle of the strip, or on a different part of the page, it will not move at all. This allows for a neat, horizontal page layout with no cluttering due to the thumbnails all occupying the same space. I’ve seen many variations in which the selected image in the set will either light up or enlarge, which eliminates any potential confusion that could occur by the mesmerizing scrolling of the images. It is also just an attractive, interactive feature that lends itself to quick browsing.

Graphic Designer Marian Bantjes is prolific as all hell and needs a website that can better organize and display all that she’s done. A fine artist, designer, illustrator, typesetter, writer, pattern-maker and so much more: it’s hard to get a grasp on all Bantjes has done; It would be a whole lot easier if her website was as conceptional and well designed as she is.
She obviously has gotten some flak for her website before, because she addresses the site in the “About Me” section saying:

This site has been built using the opensource blog/content management software, Textpattern. I fully believe that this is far superior than most of the Flash-based sites out there.

My images don’t roll in, the layout’s a little predictable, but my site is fully searchable and indexable, and man do I get good Google.

It’s not so much the lack of a splash page or fancy flash graphics that are the issue. My main problem is that she is using a blog-style layout for an artist portfolio site: oil and water. The site is put out through Textpattern and is laid out in several page sections on the header. On most of the pages, there is so much content that you are stuck scrolling, and then it goes back an unmentioned amount of previous pages, leaving the user totally lost on just how much there is to look at. Another issue that calls for a site overhaul is her “browse by category” drop down on the left margin contains 8 different categories that lend to a lot of image overlaps.

The Pros?
The “blog-looking” posts of projects are cropped and kept consistently short, allowing for maximum projects on a single page.
And she is an amazing artist, check her out.

Recognize this Spam Email?

2. How does your target audience use social media?
My target audience runs social media, man.
In an effort to promote myself, I would link my website with my Flickr account, my YouTube account, and hell— even my Facebook (I’m friends with my dad on there, so you know I keeps it clean). My target audience uses the whole array of social media sites to promote themselves as well as find those to promote.

3. How should you come across?
I want to come off as a cutting-edge, sustainable, edgy, high-speed, eco-friendly, team-player, hipster with excellent customer service skills. I want to be as many stupid buzzwords as possible. All at once.

4. What do you want to achieve?
FAME! Not really. I ideally would be working at a small design firm while doing art on the side. If that ever happens for me then the purpose of the website would be to promote the freelance-art me, not the part-of-a-larger-group-of-designers me.

5. Are you ready for a long engagement?

sure, why not.

• A personal music profile
• Access to groups and group forums
• Artist profiles and ‘similar artists’ radio stations.
• “friending” and a profile “shoutbox”
• Recommendations based on your recent listening
• Customizable Radio Stations
• Personal Blogs
• Event suggestions and posting board.

I joined audioscrobbler just days before the merge with last.FM in mid-2005, just looking for a site that would keep track of how many times I listened to whatever shit I was into back then. Little did I know it would quickly become a major force in the way I discovered new music, through social networking. The more you and other users listen to and plug in music, the more accurate the system gets in it’s linking of one artist and genre to another. And if the automatic system isn’t giving you the suggestions you hoped for, there is the option of joining forums where other users are quick to give listening advice.

It’s a cool site, it really is. But comparing only it’s social networking system with monsters like Facebook and Twitter, it falls shorter than short. There are currently over 30 million active users on last.fm and I suspect most of them, like me, grew tired of the poorly put together message boards and personal journals a long time ago. The site is really slick and simple and thats great, but when it comes to the blogs and message boards it is too simple. So simple infact, that nothing is done to organize forum posts and is just a jumble. With all the other social forums and blogs out there on the net now, Last.FM offers nothing new— just less.

The website can be a little confusing for new users and it takes some time to get a true look at your music taste so I wouldn’t really suggest it to people; and I definately don’t suggest it for those in the market for a social networking site. You don’t have to have an account to listen to most of the radio stations though, so I’d totally suggest this as an alternative to Pandora.

I hope you find it both frightening and informative.

Peak oil is… fascinating. Truly.