Telecom Prospect 2007 website
Telecom Prospect 2004 website
Design
Site designer Megan Hosking, from alto, did the '04 version too. In '07 the design has been tweaked to encompass Len Cheeseman's branding; last time round it was the four sets of branding (one for each venue) produced by Neil Pardington.
Navigation
The '07 version retains the annoying drop-downs menus, which obscure the text and images when you're trying to navigate. there's a bug in Firefox too - in IE the colour block for the menu covers all the links in the nav, but in Firefox the last couple of links get lost.
There's also a nav double up - you get the drop-down plus a page of nav. Call me old-fashioned, but I like left-hand nav. (Having said that, HappyCog Studios have ditched trad nav, and succeeded - but they are web standard heroes.)
'Opinions'
The short opinion pieces from the past two Prospects - 'real people' in '01, slightly-less-tenuously-related-to-the-visual-arts in '04 - have been dropped, meaning that the 'Opinions' section is only filled with the opinions of the director and the curator. Possibly (?) the essays from the forthcoming catalogue will appear here, although no placeholder seems to be in place.
Images
The images have been improved by the addition of a pop-up window to get a larger version (missing last time) - but don't hit 'View all the works in the exhibition' expecting an image gallery; it's a PDF list of works. And - I know, being picky - this time round they've dropped the image captions, so if there's more than one work by the artist you can't attach name to object. It also means that if you're not in the artists A-Z, you don't know whose work you're looking at.
The inclusion of installation shots is nice - what would have been nicer was linking the photos of each gallery to the 'Gallery notes' available under the 'Opinions' section. And then - even nicer - within the Gallery notes, link from each artists' name to the page on their work. It's the web people - exploit its webbiness.
And - okay, picky picky pickety pick pick - the fact that the installation shots are posted in a section called 'Participate' indicates that maybe the Gallery should have put some more thought into the site IA.
Recycling
The Comments book is particularly interesting (not because of the content - it's currently empty, but if you 'Mail [sic] your response or comments to citygallery@wmt.org.nz' they will 'endeavour to post them back on this page'.)
What is interesting is the shot of deja vu I got reading the invitation to mail a comment:
'o7Again, apparently.
We want to hear from you… we invite you to be humorous, whimsical, incendiary, sincere - in short, to be as idiosyncratic as the artists in the show. We want to hear your thoughts, feelings, comments, ideas and reviews.
'04
Now we want to hear from you… we invite you to be humorous, whimsical, incendiary, sincere - in short, to be as idiosyncratic as the artists in the show. You are also invited to talk about the show. We want to hear your thoughts, feelings, comments, ideas and reviews.
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