Resourses Inspiration

As a watch lover, I came across the newly improved website for Rolex Watches.
www.rolex.com

The first thing I notice, was how fitting the preloader is for the site. The slow revealing of the face of a Rolex watch on a simple dark background, with a small version of it logo sitting in the corner. The first tag of the menu is it product page, selling merchandise is its priority after all. All the products are categorized, and once a category is selected, additional sub-navigation is revealed on the bottom of the screen, by the way of a time line. These include introduction, models, and stories. When the user hover along the toolbar, small thumbnail appears showing further navigation. Each thumbnail magnifies as you hover over them. Very elegant way of display of a sub-menu in my opinion. It makes a very complex navigational system still very user friendly, and not clustered.

Each page is has the watch prominently shown in a crisp extra large photo, or I should say clip, since the hands on the watch is moving. It's branding is very strong on each page, even on pages that has no photos of the watches,(i.e. "my selection", "dealer locator". Instead, there are elements of the iconic watch, such as its links or partial photo of its face. They are very subtle, but still very powerful.

This website can be viewed as HTML as well. After viewing the HTML version, I really appreciate how powerful Flash is, and how much it contributes to the overall presentation of a website.

I understand that this website is a result of the collaborative of many designers, perhaps ones with many years of experience, yet I still see glimpse of how things are created. It was an inspiration for me.