M Studio
By Steven on Wednesday 14 March 2007, 21:55 - Permalink
Website: M Studio
Activity: Web Technology Specialists
Address: www.mstudio.com
Purpose: Attract Partners
M Studio is a New York-based company that develops technology for websites,
games and applications. They consult design agencies by proposing the most
suitable back-end solutions to create powerful user experiences. Solutions
range from multimedia integration and content management systems (CMS), to
databases and more complex scripting functionalities.
Their stylish website centers on an unconventional but surprisingly intuitive
navigation system. It consists of an animated stack of horizontal planes, each
representing a page of content. Clicking on one flips it forward and displays
text or portfolio pieces. Clicking elsewhere refiles it back into the
stack. It's smooth and very satisfying!
For a company that markets itself to creative agencies as a developer of
seamless and innovative solutions, they nailed it with this engaging
website.
Comments
I see you're back in the game with your blog .. Thanks :) I love your picks..
And this one is particularly great. The design, is simple, effective, the flash is responsive, fast and intuitive. It's just impressively simple and right to the point. Which is showing what they do best and what they will do for their potential clients. Hell I'd sign up right away...
And what it showcases is just as impressive: the Mazda site is great, the RF|Binder browsing animations are amazingly smooth and make the website alive despite a very boring content all in all... a perfect 10 !!!
I wonder if the browsing's been inspired by the newly added iTunes album browsing system which looks the same, except horizontally.
Although this website is amazing and features a list of no less amazing website designs, there is one thing missing : one can't go to the showcased websites directly from m-studio's flash app and no URLs are displayed. That sucks... I guess it's was made this way, but i can't see any good reason why.
Great pick nevertheless. Thanks steven :) Keep up the good picking work ...
Peace out :)
//Chand
Yeah, I agree. Though I really like the little animations they include for each project, I eventually want to see the actual site but there's no link. I had to do a Google search to find them. I originally thought that the missing link meant that the projects were only proposals that were not selected by the client. Sometimes design agencies add rejected designs into their portfolios because it nevertheless showcases their skills -- even though they weren't able to convince the client. But, this isn't the case with M Studio! All of their solutions were implemented! I'm not sure why they don't just include the direct link.
Still, I'm really impressed with their design sensibility and think they did a great job organizing such a large amount of information into this unconventional navigation system.
Hi guys, thanks for the super kind comments on the M Studio website design, my company, MSLK created it about 4 years ago. It was not inspired by iTunes. I don't think iTunes in that form existed yet : )
The missing links to the live sites was in fact intentional. One of the biggest challenges with M Studio's previous site (and portfolio sites for web programmers in general) was that visitors were constantly being driven away from his site. So let's say you go to check out M Studio's work, you click on the Mazda Zoom Zoom Island and then, 'wow' 45 minutes have gone by playing around and you've forgotten to look at the rest of M Studio's book!
The idea is that potential clients are guided through M Studio's work and spend their time enjoying the M Studio experience not each indivual site's experience. The results have been spectacular. Most visitors are sold just on the M Studio site itself and don't need to the see ther other sites.