Web's Modern Bottoms

“Modern web designers have finally decided to utilize thier bottoms”.

And even those that don’t supplement their income with prostitution have begun to do something productive with the bottom of their web pages.

This once fledgling amount of site known as the ‘footer’ usually reserved for credits and disclaimers has finally been acknowledged as the valuable pixel-holding space that it is.

Many modern footers now contain a plethora of supplemental and/or irrelevant information including but not limited to such things as bios, 72photos and flicker streams, subliminal mind control messages, tags and contact forms.

Personally, I am proud that we have finally broken through the self-induced perception that footers are less significant or unimportant in comparison to the rest of the page.

Yet for every innovative idea there are always those who insist upon imparting their own particular slant of silly into the mix. Case in point: Logo Pond.

Naturally, one begins at the top of the webpage, perhaps a quick glance at the nav, then down a bit further eyes darting left to right from ‘Featured Showcase’ across to all the lovely little logos fashioned into square boxes and laid out into rows, scrolling further down making mental notes of your favorites designs, you may even decide to…

“Quaaa? Is that the nav again?” “wait was I scrolling up or dow…MY GOD MAN! “There’s an entire site down here under this entire site?”

Now, In no way do I mean to slander the good name or the good vision of Logo Pond itself. On the contrary I oft find myself in sheer admiration of it’s compiled content.

This is merely a dramatic reenactment of a possible user response evoked by a designer’s complete and utter disregard for web design common sense in favor of unnecessary and repetitious tom-foolery involving the footer.

In the following ordered list, I have attempted to identity, label and categorize (in much the same way we did to each other in high school) the modern footer:

1. The Gobstopper – It never ends, you don’t even remember when it started. The color has changed midway through along with the texture, tone, and flavor. And yes, like the everlasting gobstopper, jaw detachment may occur due to design induced shock.
Example: Logo Pond.

2. The Sims – Imitating proximity to the ground by tiling dirt patterns and grass textures or re-creating little villages of people living at the bottom of the website. It’s strange, its bizarre and I don’t know who started it or why.

http://www.vimeo.com

3. Michael Jackson – Distinct or contrasting color change. When done tastefully, it can add a nice bit of pop drawing attention to specific content. On the other hand don’t scare people with abrupt color changes that don’t correlate in any way to the original color you started with.

http://www.ungarbage.com

4. Reality TV Web – Realistic looking things taken from still life such as notebooks, pens, fruits and flowers. Am I on a webpage on in a salad bowl? One should never have to ask this question.

http://www.catalyststudios.co.uk/

5. Mini Facebook – Contact forms, portfolios, maps, search bars, tag clouds. They’ve got so much personal information packed into this footer that anti-stalking plans are provided with their hosting.

http://www.jasonsantamaria.com/

Any of the aforementioned styles of footer can and have been done in acceptable, useful and creative ways. So by all means put your best ‘foot’er forward, but do not under any circumstance allow me to continue to use these horrendous puns by being reckless with your bottoms.