I recently* discovered my liking for things with button eyes – which is probably why the desk in my office (listen, people of Manchester! I’ve got an OFFICE. I’m a GROWN UP. Go me!) is occupied by button-eyed creatures of all sorts.
You can probably imagine how delighted I was when I discovered 365 Days of Cardboard Kid to give me my daily fix of button-eyedness: Cardboard Kid, the 2-dimensional cardboard-coloured and square looking anti-hero, who tends to get in quite dramatic situations sometimes.
I kept following the adventures of my new little cardboard friend with excitement – until last Friday, when the poor kid was involved in some sort of accident (my guess: pub fight…) and suffered severe injuries. I was more than just mildly upset, to say the least.
Fortunately, Gareth gave me the opportunity to look after the poor little fella and posted him to me, neatly wrapped in two envelopes. The other residents on my desk were rather excited about the new arrival and gave Cardboard Kid a warm welcome (only that lazy Rubix Cube couldn’t be bothered leaving his favourite spot in front of my screen). Updates on the kid’s way to recovery and his adventures with his new the button-eyed mates might follow (somewhere on Gareth’s website or facebook page).
If you think I’ve gone bonkers, you may or may not be right.
* Not quite true, I’ve been madly in love with Domo Kun for almost a decade now.
Last Thursday, the new look of visitmanchester.com was revealed and celebrated with a launch party. The website is supposed to be the ‘official tourism website for Greater Manchester‘ and provides information from fun and informal (5 top cheap eats in Manchester et al) to business related (such as conferences and hotel bookings). Naturally, such a wide range of topics and huge amounts of information, along with the technical requirements poses a real challenge for web designers and developers.
Given the rather enthusiastic twitter comments about the new website, I was keen to have a look at it, expecting something nice, neat, user friendly and visually pleasing. The following dialogue then took place between my 14 year old (that was in the 1990s!) hyperactive internet-ecstatic persona and my current cynical, Manchester-critical, internet-bored and rather boring 24 year old self:
Me then: “WOAH this is awesome! Everything’s moving!!1!!!11!” Me now: “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!” Me then: “CHECK THAT OUT! The navigation DISAPPEARS and then COMES BACK! They must have used FLASH, that is soooo cool!” Me now: “JESUS CHRIST why is everything…what…where has the navigation gone… ah there it is… hang on, is this a one-page-website? That’s cool actually! One-page websites are the future.” Me then: “MAAAN there’s like, wavy lines coming down, in different colours, and text, and photos of random people! This is THE FUTURE! I WANT TO BOUNCE AROUND! LOL!” (downs another pint of peach ice tea. I used to drink several pints of this stuff a day, going from one sugar high to the next.) Me now: “Why are there photos of random people and overlapping text snippets in the background? I can’t read anything. Is that a twitter feed or something? I don’t get it. Wait… this is not a one-page navigation, only the top boxes stay the same. Oh, no it is actually… everything I’ve seen so far is still on the page! How handy. And confusing.” (left eye starts twitching) Me then: “So many totally cool boxes EVERYWHERE! I LOVE boxes! I love CSS! CSS boxes are the FUTURE!” Me now: “Where is the navigation gone now? Eh… I feel dizzy… they could have aligned the boxes at least. Why does the menu on the left appear twice? What… Oh it says ‘Deutsch’, let’s see if they’ve got a proper translator. Whoops… no… that German looks very English to me. Huh?” Me then: “Colours!” Me now: “I don’t feel well…” Me then: “Wavy lines!!” Me now: “This is confusing…” Me then: “Mouse over effects! I LOVE mouse over effects!” Me now: “What is happening to me…” Me then: “Live Twitter feeds*!” Me now: “Everything is spinning… uugghh…” Me then: “Maaan when I grow up I want to MAKE COOL WEBSITES, like, totally!!” Me now: “Make it stop, please. Please!!” (curls up in a ball and stares at a blank wall for half an hour) Me then: “Man, you’re lame. Duh.”
While I don’t have doubts about the usefulness and quality of the content, I couldn’t possibly imagine using visitmanchester.com for anything other than casual browsing and exploring. I really don’t want to actually search for any particular information there – the website is just too confusing.
Thanks to magneticNorth for giving me the shakes and five minutes of insanity. Don’t take it personal, but WOAH! This is one mess of a website. I suppose if you test it on the over 50′s next time (Happy belated Silver Surfers’ day by the way) you could produce something less headspinning.
Time for my Horlicks now!
Edit: They made a video about the launch as well, featuring an interview with the creative director of magneticNorth (who I confused with Gary Lineker first). “Neverending cascade of information” is quite appropriate and sounds as scary as it looks. “Hopefully this will spread out…” Yeah…but… no. Please don’t.
* Ok so this is nonsense. We didn’t even have facebook then, let alone twitter. It was geocities all the way.
Basically a part of Manchester (uh oh, I really shouldn’t say that), Salford is still the big unknown to me. Even after living here for 2 years, I only ever managed to cross the bridge once*, have a wander around the Adelphi campus, and then escape back to Manchester straight away. I was quite looking forward to spending a day in “the other city” last Sunday, when several Mancunian promoters were hosting the “Sounds from the other city” festival (which was pretty awesome by the way – I’ve written a more detailed review on bunmagazine.tumblr.com)
As soon as I had crossed the bridge and left the hot pink sign screaming “Welcome – you are now IN Salford” behind me, I was greated by one of the members of society who regard tracksuit bottoms as suitable for wearing outside a gym (Please note: They’re not.), smiling at me with his teethless mouth, then shouting at his son who was wearing matching trackies. Welcome indeed.
Walking down Chapel Street was a rather sad experience: Almost every other building, presumably former pubs, on this road is empty, boarded up and crumbling. What a shame, given it is so close to the city centre and could act as an extension to Market Street, with the Northern Quarter on the upper end of the street. It almost feels like Chapel Street was intentionally left deserted to avoid any kind of confusion with Manchester – a clear cut between the centre and Salford, constituted by a no-man’s-land devoid of function (okay, it’s not that bad, but there really isn’t much on that road).
There seems to be an ambitious regeneration (let’s hope it is more ambitious than the website…) project going on (Spinningfields 2 anyone?), and with events like the Sounds from the other city festival the usual Mancunian crowd takes notice of the existence of their neighbour at last – but there is still a lot of work to be done to make this area of Salford not only a place you could easily go to, but also one you would want to.
Looking down Chapel Street towards Manchester (Jenga-like Courts of justice on the right)
Islington Mill. Former cotton mill, fantastic gig venue and artist space. There’s always something happening and it’s usually quite loud.
* Not incuding the trips to the Lowry and the Imperial War Museum North, but that doesn’t necessarily count as seeing anything of Salford itself.
Sam Bail 
You must be logged in to post a comment.