The Super Sized Web.

Some years back there was a public revolt against the fast food industry and it’s unhealthy peddlings. A lot of establishments started trying to position themselves as “better” or “health-ier” fast food alternatives. It was ridiculous and at times even a little insulting to hear the way some of the companies were throwing out their combo meal calorie count and expecting everyone to look at these commercials and say to themselves, “hey the three patty-newborn-baby-weight-burger meal is ‘only’ 85,698 calories… I guess I’ll forgo the fresh fruit and a salad today.”

As the climate against fast food chains – especially burger joints began to reach the point where companies were truly beginning to see a dent in their bottom line, a couple of players decided that rather than try to fit their round burgers into a square salad bowl, they’d buck the trend and just be – shocker – burger joints.

Instead of pretty, overly art directed images of perfectly manicured burgers next to a bottled water, yogurt parfait and a fruit cup, their campaigns featured sloppy, double and triple-patty burgers next to a Super-Gulp size drink and large fries.

They accepted the fact that they couldn’t please all of the people all of the time and they simply couldn’t cater to those who saw their offerings as pure evil. They had decided they were going to stick to what they do, do it well and please the people who wanted what they had to offer. Those that preferred a healthier alternative? Have a diet Coke with your burger…

The triple patty burgers of the design world

Even at the standard 1024px wide resolution, users will only get an eyeful of lead image on the tastefully super-sized idsgn.org

As I take note of site designs that I find appealing, more and more often I see sites that are stunning in their own right. But as I break down the elements of the design and coding, these incredible creations are often the antithesis of the best practices we most often strive to adhere to. Huge, mildly optimized images; images for every button, background, bullet and text title; tons of Javascript, pngs everywhere with unapologetic exclusion of a png fix; (gasp) all flash sites; sites, in short, that could care less about validation, search engine optimization, page rank and frankly, what you, I or anyone else thinks. These are the triple patty burgers of the design world. Designers will serve these up, other designers will rave about them, phones will ring off the hook and clients will line up to have one done.

The bottom line is that these sites were launched with the blessing of either the client, the designer or both. They aren’t trying to fit into anyone’s ideal of what a proper site design is. They’ll tell you, if you’re looking for the healthier alternative, you’ve come to the wrong place. Their aim is to reach their client and their client’s audience. Often potential clients will see the aesthetically pleasing samples in a designers portfolio and not realize the standards and SEO no-no’s an eye-candy-heavy or full flash site will likely contain, but they’ve determined what is important to them is having a site that appeals to their personal senses or a certain design trend regardless of any drawbacks it may present.

Flash has probably suffered the most through this movement towards standards and “healthier” websites. The Flash development specialist has become more and more scarce over the past several years and those that are left are the true bad asses doing some really top notch work. Again, with Flash there is a certain time, place and audience to appeal to – but the fact remains it still has its place. When done well, a good flash site is the ultimate supersize combo – aesthetics, marketing, eye-candy, wow-factor… the the 2lb burger and shake combo that’s completely unnecessary, but so satisfying when done right.

One size may not fit all. And that’s not bad…

I think even these types of designs are valuable to our web development ecosystem. Even though the strict standards based, best practice, ultimate optimized site is in most cases the best route for a business looking to see results in sales, conversions, leads etc., sometimes aesthetics are what drives a clients motives. Ultimately, the triple patty burger is what’s going to satisfy their web design appetite and they are fully willing to pay for it. There is a portion of the market that is simply interested in having an aesthetics driven site.

Sometimes you just need to fit in where you fit in. Embrace who you are and what you do. As much as the web community evangelizes standards and best practices for practically everything related to web development, it’s time to consider that one size will not fit all. And maybe, this isn’t such a bad thing.

Hidden Calories

YouLove.us was all about the innovation factor with the latest version of their website. So popular it was, they finally wrote a post detailing how they did it. With its oversized – and scrolling background image and png image text titles, it’s surely not the poster child for a load optimized site, but no doubt its brought them new clients looking for a highly creative solution.

Looks Good Enough to Eat

Anyone that knows me will tell you I’m never one to count bytes so I wouldn’t even begin to try to investigate how well MetaLab Designs web sites are or aren’t optimized. But they’ve developed a trademark style that delivers heavy on the graphics and eyecandy. My guess is that there are probably just as many people out there who despise the signature shiny / textured / layered / drop shadow look it as much as there are who love it, but it would be no stretch to guess, the clients that come to them for just such a look are rarely disappointed.

The Pastrami Burger, Unecessary But Worth It

The FWA site itself is not necessarily any example of the this super sized phenomena, rather it’s validation that the all flash site is far from dead and when done well is still revered and admired.