30 comments

  • Philip LesterPhilip Lester, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

    So yeah, looks cool, but it's really confusing with all of these visual items going on, I'm not sure what is clickable and what is mere eye candy. Also, none of the nav items work.

    Edit: After reading my initial post I'm afraid it came off a bit elitist and overly critical. I do think it's a superbly designed and developed site. The typography is gorgeous, the logo illustration is fresh, and the parallax effect is a nice touch. My point was I thought some of the design choices made the site confusing, though the target audience will likely "get" the site without issue.

    28 points
    • Dirk HCM van BoxtelDirk HCM van Boxtel, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

      This is an interesting post, especially with the edited-in-disclaimer being bigger than the original blurb :)

      I think it's our jobs as designers to - when we put up a piece of work - take the interpretations other people present to us and try to empathize, but not over-react.

      As such, I think your initial comment was spot on, and your edit more so still. And together they present what the thought process should be for anyone that receives critique.

      This reminds me of Henry Ford's "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses". Not in the sense that people don't know what they want, but that you should take any comments within the context of what these people represent. Do they represent someone who's informed about the subject matter? Are they highly critical of said matter, or fans of everything related to it? Or are they random passer-bys that have no clue what you're talking about?

      Empathy is our superpower... and the occasional grain of salt our secret weapon ;)

      9 points
      • Yitong ZhangYitong Zhang, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

        I can't upvote this enough. Thanks for coming out and saying that, Dirk. I completely agree with you. There's an old model of communication that goes something like:

        Sender -> encoding -> message -> decoding -> recipient

        As designers, our job is not only to encode products so that the our users have as little to decode as possible, but also to do reverse. Decoding the user feedback is also hugely important.

        1 point
    • Leszek PietrzakLeszek Pietrzak, almost 8 years ago

      I think your comment is spot on, even without the apologising edit. We as a design community are far too easily satisfied with a thing looking nice these days. Too often I see us just patting our backs, after looking on projects through design-tinted glasses. The design should be transparent and serve the content, not come before it and steal the thunder.

      0 points
  • Timothy Kempf, almost 8 years ago

    This site would be lovely if it ever explained what it was for.

    12 points
  • Ben Cline, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

    Hi all,

    The feedback is appreciated and I agree with most of it. I need to caveat that the site was designed and developed in less than 3 weeks. Rally did the site for free in exchange for being a sponsor.

    There will be a second release in a few weeks with more content, FAQS, and speaker announcements — and bug fixes. ( ie. fixed broken links — those are supposed to go to different sites that we didn't build and they don't have DNS pointing yet, E. 1 and gallery aren't even being hosted ATM )

    Also, some of the code ( CSS & and tiny bit of JS ) was written by me ( I had never written any CSS or JS before starting this site ). So expect to find a mess in there.

    10 points
    • alec salec s, almost 8 years ago

      I'd argue that since this is the third one of these in less than a year, it's very much a product.

      1 point
      • Ben Cline, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

        Valid point. It is what it is (short timeline). Done is better than perfect. There have been tons of invite requests today already, so we're stoked on that.

        2 points
        • Andy StoneAndy Stone, almost 8 years ago

          It's a rockin' site and our entire agency was looking at it on Friday. Especially for a quick release, you should be super proud. Also, and this is always huge with the industry, congratulations on making a site that doesn't look like anything else we've seen lately.

          0 points
  • Daniel GoldenDaniel Golden, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

    The paralax, the scroll inertia... Just wow. Rally are beasts.

    7 points
    • Jon Rundle, almost 8 years ago

      Agreed. This is how to actually do a paralax site.

      2 points
    • Madison BullardMadison Bullard, almost 8 years ago

      came to comments to say this. leaving some elements anchored to normal scroll behavior while tying some to inertial motion is the best way to have your fancy scrolling without pissing users off (when done right). they still feel totally in control.

      0 points
  • Alex CampAlex Camp, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

    Tasteful parallax... Cool site (get it??). Takes a second to figure out what you're reading but overall it's pretty unique. As someone else pointed out that nav needs fixed.

    1 point
  • Vladimir BabicVladimir Babic, almost 8 years ago

    Well this is a proper use of parallax. Good work.

    1 point
  • Jordan RomanoffJordan Romanoff, almost 8 years ago

    The site is looking really cool. Its definitely different, and seems to have more of the feel of contemporary poster design to me which is a welcome change of speed for web. I've been trying to get a bit more ambitious with my web work and this serves as great inspiration!

    I have mixed feelings about the functionality/hierarchy as some of the other viewers have expressed. This might just be a personal thing, but with all of the small parallax items and the less than intuitive site structure I felt a little motion sickness while trying to figure out what the site was about (Ok, maybe I need to chill on the coffee...).

    As a last note/question: whats the consensus on using a hamburger menu on desktop? It feels a bit clumsy to me when you have all of that nice space to use. That might be compounded a bit by its placement in the upper lefthand corner rather than the right which is the format I'm used to.

    0 points
  • Gabriel AnghelGabriel Anghel, almost 8 years ago

    Doesn't realy work on ipad.

    0 points
  • Nicholas HendrickxNicholas Hendrickx, almost 8 years ago

    Could scroll this all day.

    0 points
  • Frédéric AudetFrédéric Audet, almost 8 years ago

    Hope I see some of you there.

    0 points
  • Gideon BGideon B, almost 8 years ago

    It seems like the all best scroll effects cause browser lag. This isn't a criticism of this site - I'm not even sure these effects are possible without some scroll lag. This site is on a whole new level.

    I am wondering -- has anyone has found a catalog of all the parallax hardware acceleration tricks and the performance cost of different effects? That would be a really valuable resource.

    0 points
  • Patrick Dube, almost 8 years ago

    Designed and developed in less than 3 weeks... the result is just EPIC! Congrats to the team @ Rally!

    0 points
  • jonathan bowdenjonathan bowden, almost 8 years ago

    Fantastic design by Ben and the fine folks at Rally! Well done!

    0 points
  • Thomas RawcliffeThomas Rawcliffe, almost 8 years ago

    I love this kind of site design. But I never have a fucking clue what is going on.

    0 points
  • Louis BLouis B, almost 8 years ago

    Pfft, eff the haters (or critiquers), do something different, this is epic. Love it.

    0 points
  • Christopher Mansfield, almost 8 years ago

    A fantastic visual experience (as always from Rally), unfortunately, this has been at the expense of intuitive usability and communication. Instantly failing a squint test.

    We are seeing more websites exploring this style, which is a important breath of fresh air from the classic landing pages of the past couple of years and I am looking forward to seeing the update and where Rally go from here.

    0 points
  • J LiJ Li, almost 8 years ago

    Took me a while to find the sign up button. I was expecting it to be at the bottom of the page.

    0 points
  • Ashley CyborskiAshley Cyborski, almost 8 years ago

    Just wanted to comment for feedback's sake, but when I click on the menu, nothing appears for me except for a large green expanse. I had to go in and manually remove a position absolute on the outer-nav to see anything, and I still don't think I'm seeing it all. (I'm in chrome, mac, yosemite).

    also...there is a class called "menugridthingy"....

    0 points
  • Matt WilliamsMatt Williams, almost 8 years ago

    Damn I need to go to one of these events!

    0 points