21st
Brian Quinn Website Retrospective.
I realize now (in my post-weekend haze) that I completely forgot to thank the extraordinary Brian Quinn, who built our party invitation website. In fact, Brian has done our last 3 website invitations. It’s a debatable topic: have they gotten more preposterous over time or maintained their level of irreverence? Whatever your stance, his Pink Ball invite was the classiest one yet.
I pitched a new invite to Brian on seven days notice. I said, “Can you do a site for the Pink Ball in two days?” We met Monday at 9:30 for ideas. He had a draft up in a few hours. It was hilarious. I asked if he could redo it (he should have told me to shove it up my ass). He redid it on Tuesday night. The second draft is far more refined than the first, more subtle too. The first draft, if you can picture it:
1. pink-stockinged legs float down a pink background, legs and frilly panties.
2. the woman’s legs move at you very fast, and her panties seem poised to leap through your screen.
3. suddenly, violently, a pink flower blossoms out of the middle of her crotch, filling the browser. The word “Invitation” appears.
Brian understands the one major theme that unites these websites, the reason I find them so memorable. Each site requires more patience from the user than is necessary. Now, a shitload of websites make you spend far more time visiting them than you can stand. But that’s because they are designed to be user-friendly and aren’t. In an ironic twist, Brian’s invitations are like Evites. Both take a considerable amount of time to use and accomplish the same end result (inviting you to a party). But Brian’s use of your time is deliberate. Evite has no idea they’re wasting your time.
I have nothing against Evites. The cookie-cutter themes. The advertisements. The registration requests. The extraordinary amount of text. The corny roll-call with corny comments. Love em to death. But I’ll never be caught dead putting one together.
Here are Brian’s web invites with the event dates. Sadly, these evenings are nothing but memories. And by memories I mean jpegs on Steph’s Flickr set.
The East River Badminton Club’s “Gin Social”: June 2, 2007 (click on the birdies that appear)
Bastille Day: July 14, 2007 (turn up the volume on your speakers)
Pink Ball: May 17, 2007 (click repeatedly)
oh… and of course, Brian also designed this site and the site for my business.