In my last post I said “weblogs are starting to get a little old.â€
Let me clarify.
Weblogs are not old, they’re just getting started but personally I’m feeling the need to get away from the confines of the blog structure and take this site beyond a title, main body, and comments link.
A few days ago I was reminded that the web can be anything, it’s all a matter of what you want to do with it. This ‘smack forehand against forehead’ moment came to me as I clicked around Jeff Bridges’ personal website.
Unlike your average actors website, Jeff uses his space to display the product of his many talents including photography, sculpture, and music. On the site there are entries pertaining to updates in the actor’s life and a few notes in reaction to current events. His circum vitae is a simple list with Amazon Associate links to purchase movies or soundtracks. And of course where would a website be without a collection of links to elsewhere.
Without looking at this site, it sounds very similar to your average, straight out of the box weblog, but take a look and you’ll see something different.
Now argue all you want about the lack of web standards or the lack of proper site navigation. Go ahead and make a smart remark about the use of image-based text that can’t be searched by Google. Feel free to mutter something about first generation design.
I see an incredible website in which every page feels like it’s own secret garden — a space that needs to be discovered, not scanned or searched. While the content is similar in form to that of a million other personal sites, Jeff has created a space that looks, refreshingly, nothing of the sort.
The Fisher King has ignored all the modern conventions of personal site/blog design and successfully created a space that is as simple and elegant as anything created by fully validated style sheets or Flash.
As I understand it, a great aunt of mine, on the Storey side of the family, would have said ‘shitfire’ about now.
It’s time to shake things up and get a lot more creative. Time to take a sabbatical from the norm wherever possible.
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
You're absolutely right. The problem with the idea-makers on the web is that an idea is spun over and over. I find it most difficult to actually create an original and unique idea. It's so much easier to take a great idea and work with it. So, with weblogs, the idea is there, the presentation changes. The next big thing will come. And we'll be right along to mimmick the hell out of it.
As for Jeff Bridges' web site. Yeah, that's a pretty unique way to present yourself.
Sure it's unique and very creative, but I found it difficult to read. That has to count for something. Btw, his site is fairly old.
I too am growing a bit tired of the blog concept. The chronological posts, the archives, the comments, yadda yadda yadda. I stopped reading blogs daily quite some time ago. That said, the content on some sites (yours included, btw) doesn't get old. My list of semi-regular reads has a similar appeal to me as regular columnists or comic strips do, but with the added bonus that the writers and artists who author blogs I read haven't been given the 'stamp of approval' of mainstream press. In other words, it's not just the 'look and feel' of sites which keeps me invested in blogs and blogging. Were that the case, reading anything in print would have grown tiresome by the time I was in third grade.
While I appreciate the non-bloggish nature of Mr. Bridges' site, it's really a throwback to an era where 'personal sites' were static portfolios, each page hand-coded or wysiwygged up in programs like pagemill or cyberstudio. This is by no means a criticism of Mr. Bridges or his online endeavors--far from it! Indeed, his site does have a strange novelty to it--the almost complete lack of Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, etc. gives his site an oddly 'warm' and welcoming feel which I probably haven't seen in years. But to say that his site deviates from the norm is a bit gratuitous, I think. It merely draws upon a nostalgia for an older norm--a norm where content management mechanisms were well out of reach for the 'personal' web.
Really good. How did you stumble upon JB's site?
The Wayback Machine shows the site began sometime in the fall of 1999. Not old enough to know the early days of Netscape 1.1 but old enough to have lived through the crazy hazy days of dot com. Boysen mentioned the site being fairly old. How old is farly old these days?
That the design is approaching four years of age only makes me want to celebrate it more.
I found this site by following some photography links. After seeing some of his posted samples I can't wait to see Jeff's book. Very nice work.
Very cool.
The public beta of Central had a mixed review today. But people were talking about it everywhere. (see links on Mike's blog).
We can't add new apps yet, and there is no information on how to go about building one. After all the hype and waiting around, this is definitely an anticlimax. Not because it isn't a good product - I'm sure it's wonderful, but because it is us, the developers, who will make it interesting. When all you have to look at cinema listings and weather reports (from another country), its hard to get too excited.
Nork porn
http://www.norsk-porn.com