Last August I stopped working at Method Studios in Santa Monica. Among other things I did their website. Today a new design and back end went live at www.methodstudios.com. I have nothing to do with this version of the site. Of course I have an opinion about it:
To make things overall lighter is a nice touch. That’s where the good news about the new site ends. It’s design is cluttered. “Copyright 2005” prominently points to what seems to have been a rather long internal process. (Has been corrected.) Much care went into the usability of the original ‘dark site’. It tried to connect people quickly with the content that they would be looking for. None of this is left. Changes in navigations are sometimes needed. But ignoring years of user interaction is plain stupid and arrogant.
Method Studios had a website from it’s inception in 1998. The concept of the site was to show all the work that the company had ever worked on. At least this has not been changed. Just that it’s connection with search engines and users will be different and in parts is broken.
The internet has changed since Method’s site went online. It is saddening to me to see that none of these changes were able to alter the current site. It’s just a failed rip off.
It reminds me strongly of the Dodge 600