Part of my morning ritual is to grab the iPad and hit all my news sites to get caught up on the events that happened overnight. As I loaded the south Florida Sun Sentinel newspaper’s website, an ad caught my eye. Normally I don’t give ads on websites a second glance, but there was something about this one that sparked my curiosity.
Here was an ad for a flooring company, with a naked guy who looks like he just walked off a 70’s porn shoot laying down on what appears to be shag carpeting. I said to myself, “Ok, it worked, let me click on it and see what this website is all about” thinking it was a clever ruse to get me to click.
Much to my surprise, I was taken to a website where this same guy, in the same pose, on the same shag rug, in his same naked glory was dominating the top part of the website advertising Don Bailey Flooring.
Can this be THE Don Bailey?
Can this be for real?
What on God’s good earth does this guy have to do with flooring?
This is a perfect example of what I call “WTF Webdesign.” WTF Webdesign isn’t a style of design, it’s more of an example of what to stay away from when coming up a design for your website. 70’s naked guy just doesn’t belong here. He doesn’t fit in. Just like flashing animated .gif’s, cheap MIDI music or the scrolling LED sign don’t fit in on websites intended to reach an audience living in 2010. They may have been fine in the 90’s when that was about all you could do to spice up a website, but just like 70’s naked guy, it’s time to move on.
Besides the fact that this strange and bizarre image is the first thing your eyes go to on this website, the whole thing is just creepy. I’m trying to figure out the intent the designer, and store owner, had in mind when choosing 70’s naked guy to more or less be the company’s logo.
Ladies may have dreamed about picking his keys out of the fishbowl at swinger’s night in the summer of ’74, but even then, what does this have to with flooring?
It may be subliminal. Have Don Bailey lay your carpet then Don Bailey will lay…. um, yeah… let’s not go there.
Men may be the largest target audience for a website like this. Guys looking for the best price on wood laminate to tackle that weekend project may not be too thrilled having 70’s naked guy glaring at them while comparing prices.
I was hoping that this was all just a by-product of getting up way too early this morning to catch a flight. Unfortunately it’s not and 70’s naked guy is now burned into my retina and I will never look at shag carpeting the same way again.