Spent some time yesterday poking the underbelly of the Breyer web site - the legal way, via the links, tabs and buttons.
I’d consider myself a fairly adept user - I even took some classes, back in the day, when I had delusions of being a webmaster. Even though I haven’t done much in that department since then, I still find myself obsessing over the structure of every web site I visit. If I get annoyed enough, I’ll even start sketching out - on paper, or even just in my head - how I’d reconfigure it.
I wasn’t super-impressed with the Breyer web site before, but now that I’ve spent some time wandering around the place, I think it annoys me more than almost any other site I visit on a regular basis. There’s too much "fluff" getting in the way of the "stuff". Fooey!
Rather than discuss how I’d completely restructure it, let’s discuss the BreyerFest material, which was my original reason for visiting the site.
I am not as upset as many are about the lack of true "Britishness" regarding the Celebration Horse "Mariah’s Boon", and the Store Special "Taskin". They are, if not true British breeds, at least British-flavoured.
I am as mystified as everyone else over the Early Bird Special: a Stretched Morgan mold, in Liver Chestnut? That’s one peculiar choice for a British-themed BreyerFest. Aren’t Morgans like the quintessential American breed? Kind of wondering how they’ll spin that one. (As a product of "New" England? Maybe? Whatever.)
"Bennington" seems a little blah from the picture, but that’s probably more the photographer’s fault than the horse. I certainly wouldn’t complain if I won one.
The dapply-dun-silver-whatever that is the SR Cigar "Aintree" is beautiful, but my preference between the two now public Tent SRs is the British White Bull "Bowland", on the Charolais Bull mold. I’ve wanted a British White for years, so that one’s a no-brainer for me. There’s at least one other Tent SR that’s on my must-have list, but since the photos haven’t officially been made public yet, I’ll have to continue refraining comment. (HINT: I kinda-sorta gave you a clue the last time I talked about them.)
I’m running way short of time today (work + driveway shoveling) so I’ll finish up the BreyerFest 2012 discussion tomorrow.
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5 comments:
Funny, I find the Breyer website easy to maneuver. I don't get the hate. But, then again, I don't get much of the Breyer hate that pops up the boards.
I too have no problems with the Breyer website and quite like it. Personally I'm not crazy about the sr's so far. Except that british bull is stunning. Even though I don't collect them.
It's not the navigation or site map, so much as the aesthetics - it has a very cluttered, busy look to it, which I find very distracting, and visually enervating. It lacks cohesiveness.
As I've said before, I'm something of a minimalist, when it comes to design. As my art school profs used to say, "Less is More."
I also agree with Andrea that it's a bit busy, but it does fit in line with other toy companies' sites such as Barbie, Lego, Disney, and My Little Pony.
KW
I used to visit Breyer's website with Firefox's Flash-blocker turned on. 95% of the site was Flash at the time (and I was using dial-up). Way too many pointless busy-squares for my taste. Hopefully now that they're online-only, they'll update more often. They were bad about that in the past.
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