Do you remember the first time?
For the next show I’ll burn my own suitcase. Is anyone from the public willing to assist me?
I remember the first website that I’ve done. Its name was Aeronave and it had free hosting. Don’t rush to click, let it rest in the sites’ heaven, from where it looks at me and smiles. It’s better if I tell you its story.
- The menu was created using a buttons generator
- I created an intro that I used to claim it was “Flash”, but it was actually created using timelines with Dreamweaver (my intention wasn’t to cheat the world, I just had no idea of what Flash was and I associated it with anything animated).
- There were no 2 pages looking alike. Each of them was an independent exercise of creation and imagination
- Using a tiny “morphing” software I created a 2Mb animation with a Spitfire that used to transform itself into a F-22. I placed it on the page as a design element so that everybody could enjoy my exaltation. I couldn’t understand why it used to appear so late.
- None of the page elements remained where I would have loved to, because I didn’t even discover the tables then (Even from those times I was table-less. And I was also clueless, sleepless and penniless)
- As a background I had images with planes and - here and there - it was no chance for one to read something.
- I created a sort of an animated logo with a bullet that passes off the word “Aircraft” and breaks it (Pixar who?)
- Any pictures went through 3 (three) to 100 (one hundred) special Photoshop effects. From them, let’s recall the planes changed into basreliefs, images garnished with 5 lens-flares (these were irresistible, one was never enough) and -my favorite - motion blur.
But there was something at this website! It had content. I had collected for weeks everything I found on the Web about aircrafts. Serious things, no nonsense. Drafts, specifications, history, air-raids, investigations, hypothesis, experimental projects. I even had audio recordings with a veteran who witnessed the Red Baron crash.
As a conclusion: it was a web site full of high quality content, which - unfortunately - [the content] suffered the abuses of one child of the web-design stuff [that’s me] who dressed it into clown clothes, covered it with jam, pulled its hair, locked it in the closet and knocked it out with the toy-car. As a client and content provider I should have fire myself.
It happened in 1998 and I had the same keyboard I have now (no-name, for those who want to buy one). But many things changed since then. Today I don’t dress the content with clown clothes anymore. I don’t constrain visitors to bear my creative aberrations. I try to lead them exactly where they want. I want them to tell me “See you soon” instead of “Farewell” at their depart. I don’t let them to exude, to cross their eyes, to develop tears, to screw up their eyes, to turn up the eyes over the had, to blink frequently (I was an ophthalmologist in another life)… I don’t let them to frown, to scratch their heads for surprise, to swear my name, to loose their time. Now I don’t let them do stuffs that didn’t worth at least 2 pennies for me eight years ago.
Maybe one day I’ll remake it. And after another eight years I’ll laugh again. I hope my keyboard won’t leave me, because I intend to make the same joke.