In speaking with Mike Fetrow yesterday about his departure from Colle + McVoy, we learned that his former shop created what we consider to be one of our favorite time-wasting Web sites, YearbookYourself dot com.
We first mentioned the site last week, when we kinda sorta railed the FiveAlive microsite. In case you’re too lazy to click, we said “There are sites that do UX much better (than FiveAlive), such as T3’s Script Your Trip and Virtual Office, and another of my favs, YearbookYourself.”
Fetrow tells us that during his stay at C+M, he was in charge of YBY, a site that allows users to upload their image to a program that puts one’s face in place of awkward high school students. Templates include photos dating from the 50s all the way through 2000. We made a few, one of which you’ll see above. Check it out; it’s a great way to waste time.
Check out Fetrow’s comments on the site, after the jump.
More: Colle + McVoy Part with Mike Fetrow
“The site was designed as a way for Taubman (our client who owns a bunch of malls across the country such as The Beverly Center) to create buzz around a back-to-school promo. The team came up with a lot of different ideas, but the Yearbook Yourself idea seemed to have all the things that we looked for — it was something that we hadn’t seen before, it fit the assignment, it was something that we all agreed that we would pass along if someone sent it to us. Which is a key thing if you hope to have something catch on and travel around (we try to avoid the over-used term viral), and it was an idea that we we’re all really excited about. It seems to have worked. Just yesterday we broke through 3.5 Million hits. with an average time spent on the site is around 10 minutes.”
The rest of the team:
GCD: Eric Husband
AD: Nina Orezzoli
WR: Tim Blevins
Designer:
Lindsey Aho
Interactive Designer: Grant Eull
Interactive GCD: Todd Zerger
Dev lead: Jason Striegel
Developer: Andrew Charon