Montreal interactive design house Akufen (http://www.akufen.ca/#en/projects) pulled together this amazing Flash portfolio for photographer Jean Malek. The site unfolds (literally) like origami, creating an exquisite interface that beautifully showcases Malek’s camera work. Like a lot of smart Flash sites, jeanmalek.com features a fullscreen option that enables an optimum view of the content, as well as a polite, soft, subtle and non-intrusive use of sound.
Like most smarter Flash sites today, the site also features deep linking, enabling unique URLs (i.e. web addresses) for each section of the website, instead of the old Flash model that had one address (www.flashwebsite.com) for all sections of the site. Deep linking is critical in today’s online environment.
One of my pet peeves about a lot of web design is scrollbars. Most of them are ugly. On the sections that require scrolling, like NEWS, this site unapologetically uses a slim, slick scrollbar with no up/down arrows. Just a slim scrollbar that slides up and down the scroll “track.” Big thanks to Akufen for not perpetuating ugly scrollbar syndrome, not settling for the hideous “out-of-the-box” scrollbar. They took the time to customize their own.
Great work. Jean Malek: http://www.jeanmalek.com/
