A few months ago, I joined a pitch to redesign the Ayala Malls website, a hefty project that was supposed to keep me busy for about 10-12 weeks. The deal ultimately fell through, and I found out later that the gig was awarded to this small design studio I’d never heard of.
My pitch design looked liked this. After not having seen it for almost half a year, I’ll admit that it’s actually a bit over-the-top for a shopping portal.
Well, the new site was launched some time ago (although I only remembered to check today), and I have to say, that is the most godawful shade of red I’ve ever seen on a portal (and no, it ain’t web-safe either).
The whole thing smacks of an amateur developer’s handiwork. I mean, just look at those blurry tool-icons on the upper right. Why is that printer icon leading me to the sitemap? And why does the sitemap have all that “cool” stock-Dreamweaver Javascript, but links to nowhere?
CSS is used inconsistently throughout the code too. Apart from the fact that they still use the positively archaic <font> tag, the CSS file itself looks like it was written by a mindless automaton.
Other weirdness includes the misspelled “Neswletter” header (and check out the limp-dick copy on that page too), the disabled right-click (which, I suppose, they implemented to prevent you from copying their wonderful tool-icons), and the ridiculously-stretched logos on this page.
I could go on and on, but hey, I don’t want people to think I’m bitter or anything.