By Margaret Wong
NRG is screaming "energy" when it comes to web designs.
As a company that targets high-end graphics, concentrating on 3-D
graphics, animation, Flash, and audio background and captioning, their
main site introduces the potential customer to an overwhelming amount
of interactivity. Though a novelty upon first contact with Flash sites,
the extraneous amount of time spent in transition between actions
can get irritating.
As a portal of portfolio for their work, www.nrg.be is no doubt an
excellent representation. An excellent design aspect of the site is
their simplicity upon first glance. Since graphics is their forte,
the designers has taken great care to eliminate words as much as possible.
This greatly enhances the graphical design and impact on the site's
overall presentational value. Clean, clear, and precise, potential
customers are given plenty of samples to choose from.
"Get Ready for a Creative Power" is their slogan, and creative
it certainly is. However, like most sites involving Flash and rich
multimedia, slower connection viewers get systematically eliminated
from the potential customers' pool, as well as the audience of such
potential customers. Through the surge in popularity of higher speed
connections this problem should cease to exist in the near future,
though it certainly presents itself as an obstacle in the present
digital divide.
NRG's site is aimed at web savvy viewers, as its contents are not
obviously displayed upon entry. Mouseover techniques were necessary
to display the site's menu options, portfolio locations, multimedia
downloads such as screensavers, and more. Though the different techniques
involved in creating the site is impressive, and its interactive nature
engages the viewer entirely, it literally takes a full seven seconds
to go from one menu to another due to its Flash nature. The navigation,
in this respect, fails horribly. There are no menu options within
each sub-menu to quickly change categories, such as changing from
"Site by NRG" to "Graphics". Such time consumption,
beyond the first time visitor, generally wears on the surfer's patience
and turns interest into annoyance. But overall the site is still very
impressive and leaves the viewer craving for more. In comparison to
other commercial sites, especially static sites, www.nrg.be is truly
a break through and will remain memorable for all those who had the
pleasure of viewing it.