About This Site, and Why It Looks So Familiar
As a web professional, I often hear about the creativity and superiority of the
design of Apple’s website. So I thought it would be an interesting experiment to
create a website using the Apple wrapper with a spoof product and see how it would
be received.
The Design
When the Apple website is broken down, it is actually a very simple design. It is
primarily monochromatic—void of color—with the exception of the product imagery
which is what makes them pop. The template is a traditional reverse “L” layout and
there is no real technical innovation. It is simply a wrapper with sexy, eye popping
product photography. But it works! It’s simple, well organized, usable, and consistent.
The French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery once said about simplicity: “Perfection
is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left
to remove.” That couldn’t be a more fitting description of the Apple website.
The Process
So the idea was to take the most basic, mythical product and see if we could duplicate
the Apple magic. We considered many contrivances such as the widget, a gizmo, a
thingamajig, doodad, doohickey, but settled on the metaphorical “Buggy-Whip” as
the star of our make believe website.
We purchased some buggy whips on E-Bay, staged a photo shoot, and went through the
web design process to create our spoof website. We had everyone involved, the Visual
Designers, Information Architects, Photographers, Developers, and even the copywriter
(me). In all it took about 2 months to design and build and now it is out there
for all to see, and hopefully laugh