Hillman Curtis, Monkeys Differ on Web Design Priorities
It’s a day of winners. Our friends at STEP Inside Design have just posted online their annual Best of the Web/Interactive Design feature, which includes an in-depth look at the top selections of judges Hillman Curtis (hillmancurtis inc.), Joe Pemberton (Punchcut), and Kelly Goto (gotomedia). Curtis chose as ‘best in show’ Los Angeles-based Hello Design‘s site for the Toyota Yaris, a web experience that rather than assaulting the visitor with sparkly, spinning Flash-based photorealistic renderings, invites them to take a virtual test drive in a cartoony Yaris illustrated by Dave Needham.
“[Car sites are] very formulaic,” Curtis tells STEP. “But this was a little more funky, more approachable and fun. They weren’t using the monkey trick.” That is, the tendency of monkeys to become fascinated with shiny objects. “They weren’t doing that,” he adds. “Which was a relief.” For more on Hello Design’s “video-game-ish, choose-your-own-adventure feeling” project, and oodles more exemplary web-based design that may or may not intrigue non-human primates, click here.
