Website research report

The site I have chosen for the research is www.postgal.com

Originally named Underline, the web site owners (John Chan and Pam Hung) received more than ten awards for their uniqueness of their styles on a range of skills ranging from web development, animation, multimedia and character designs. Postgal.com is also the few pioneers on using extensive flash context and layout since flash is introduced to the public since 2001. Postgal.com is now the group’s profile web site, with their works such as the well known “Fool Lee” animation split into another separate web site.

The site is integrated with both design and art elements, where I believe the design factor lays on the identity of the web site of being a profile web site that is designed to be informative without much hassle to navigate the site. On the other hand, the art aspect of the web site exists, which keeps the style of the group which will be mentioned below.

The structure of the web site follows a narrative of interactivity of the character. Due to that case, the web site feels a lot more organic than it is. The visual metaphor of the site involves a lot of interactivity such as the followings:

- opening up a box

- opening a mail

- stepping on different blocks

The interactivity is creative and very self explanatory during navigation of the web site. Help is also available when users rollover the postgal.com icon.

This English version of postgal.com is however not using hyperlinks to reference to other sites other than its own postgal.com group pages.

The use of full Flash and some likely to be Java script technology of the site may not be new in nowadays, but it is used in the group’s own way of fashion to enrich the experience to the users like no other Flash web site. This experience is also reinforced if not created by the background music of the web site. The uniqueness of the tone and style of this background music is a major key that makes postgal.com stands out from other web sites. Users can notice a object in the vox at the index page of the site, and the object keeps updating once a while to make the experience for users to feel fresh once in a while when they visit the web site. A side note is that for the Chinese version of the site, the main menu flash animation menu and background music changes quite frequently.