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80's Movies Gateway, The
http://www.fast-rewind.com

Category:
Movies & TV

Created by:
Nick Alaway in 2001

Rating:
8.7 (2 votes)

Date added:
Feb 10th, 2002

Last updated:
Feb 11th, 2002

Tools Used:
Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Apache, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Notepad

Designer's words:
Being only an amateur 'graphic designer' and seeing the slamming that many of the professional designers have received on here makes me wince at the thought of the comments my own efforts will receive!

Like many content based sites, the clever part is the underlying mechanisms that power the site. In my case, I had to write my own CMS, having neither the money for professional solutions or knowledge and installed copy of MySQL.

The design itself is something that polarises opinion. Some people see it (and enjoy it) for what (I hope) it is, which is an attempt to recreate the fun, lurid, colour-clash graphic design of the 80's. Others seem to just plain dislike the design, the colours in particular...

One thing is sure: Safe it ain't!

There are two aspects it seems that are needed for a successful design. One is the part concentrated in here, on this site, which is the graphic design element. The other is the achievement of the basic site goals, which is having and managing the right content, including the right dynamic content, being listed in the right places, monitoring and optimising traffic flow and all that more boring 'mechanical' or 'business-ey' stuff...

Either facet on its own does not a successful site make... You need both and I think few people are likely to be very good at both parts. Hence in my case, the graphic design is open to (fair) criticism, and there are many other sites with stunning designs that have little or no content.

One day I'll have won the lottery and be able to pay a great designer to do the graphics. Until then... Be kind, I'm only an amateur!

Our comments:
The 80's Movies Gateway is a homage to the great movies of the 80's. Yes, there is a little too much drop-shadow use, but the site design is perfectly compatible with the content so get ready to experience the full color spectrum. After all, this is 80's, when men weren't afraid of wearing pastel suits and women explored all the bold colors. The optimism of the decade can be found in typography too. Who wants to use boring Times when there are so many exotic typefaces to "showcase"? And of course there is neon, which is so hard to resist. If you want to see how graphic design was in the 80's, this is it! The only gripe is the size of the movie selection menu: it might be a little bigger.

--Aycan