The Computerworld headline drew my attention: Seek censors wacky web job ad.

“We didn’t know that the word ‘communist’ is offensive along with the word ‘porn’ and the word ‘freaks’. But Seek said we are allowed to use ‘porn’ if we were advertising for a secretarial position in the porn industry. Also the word ‘drunk’ can be seen as offensive too,” Resn’s digital strategist, Andy Williams, says in an email.

Interesting stuff, I thought. There’s also a link in the story to a Trade Me job ad. The very same ad, uncensored. I personally think they come across as spoilt teenagers, but kudos to anyone who tries to break the mould a little. Goodness knows the job market is a droll place at the best of times.

But within the ad is the following:

Look at our website BEFORE applying… if you can design like that, we want you. If you can’t, please please please don’t apply. Google ‘Resn’.

Now, I am certainly no designer myself. I can’t even design my own web site to please myself, though I do enjoy dabbling. However, I can figure out the Wellington, New Zealand-based design company’s web address without the aid of Google. So right off the bat, I think they’re setting their sights low.

Anyway, I typed in their address (what do you know, it worked – and I typed it in the address bar, not a Google search box) to take a look for myself. I was greeted with a white page and a play button. Not part of their design. My Flash blocker plugin at work. My expectations dropped even further at this point. Reluctantly, I clicked the button and waited…

…and waited…

…and waited…

So far I had some black and white elements on the page and a loading percentage in large, easy to read numbers in the corner. Easier to read because of the slow rate of their progression. You only have so long to make an impression with any web site, and I say that time is significantly less than the 20 or so seconds it took the site to load. I almost gave up. There was the added spectacle of purple, err, sacks, bubbles, whatever, that were expanding, ever expanding as the page slowly loaded. Water balloons. That’s what they looked like. In fact I was expecting them to explode all over my screen when the counter hit 100%. But no. They just went away.

They were replaced with more white on black writing and what I can only describe as some sort of plasma ball – perhaps reminiscent of volcanic rock oozing beneath the crust of the sphere. This ball rotates in the direction of the mouse pointer, so long as it remains within the browser window. It rotates faster the further away the pointer is too. And there’s some quite nice ambient music in the background. Unfortunately the ball is heavily pixellated which detracts markedly from the effect.

So far, odd, apparently meaningless, but not terrible.

Then I dared to hover the mouse over one of the menu elements! Two somehow entwined swans descend, hanging upside down from the menu item and the main page is ‘graced’ with a scene of horses on a hillside by an expanse of water, in front of some mountains. And then horribly reflected to the right and below. This device serves absolutely no purpose. Only by clicking on the menu item does the scene change. Thankfully, because moving the mouse while this scene is present causes the picture to break up a little and move in bands at an annoyingly high frequency. Almost like the digitial equivalent of a bad television picture.

Anyway, I clicked on ‘About’ and was greeted with an abstract, black-and-white scene and some sort of purple bat-like creature with laser eyes floating around the screen. My eyes moved over to the words now present on the left.

WHAT WE GOTS

Resn believe in creating pretty things from absolutely nothing….is this possible?

It went on, but I stopped there. I really had to. I stand by my assessment of spoilt teenagers.

Like I said, I’m no designer. Maybe this is kind of work is ‘in’ now. Maybe they’re making a ton of cash and laughing at me. Laughing all the way to the bank. Maybe there’s some sort of market for this I’m not familiar with.

Maybe.

No, I’m no designer, but I know what I like and I don’t think my tastes are very far off a large proportion of folks. But I wonder, Resn, what you expect to achieve with your design in an age where Flash blockers are quite common?

And this on a day when I tried – really tried – to like Microsoft Sharepoint. I’ve just decided it shall henceforth be called ‘Nopoint’. The two things seem to share that certain something: “Why?”