Stunning site for WWF France – documenting the past 40 years. Featuring an interactive timeline that you scroll through showing video thumbnails – clicking them and they expand to more detail – bit of parallax effect and some light information. Nice timeline shown at the bottom of the page – rollover to expand – which categorises the various events and milestones. Loads of cool transitions and smooth animation throughout, very nice…
Created by WWF France (@WWFFrance).
Stunning immersive site about the decline and changes to the glaciers in the Himalayas. Featuring a documentary style explorative interface, using ultra high resolution photography to zoom in – try zooming in on the camp at base camp – and see the landscape of the region around Mt Everest. A wealth of well considered content from videos in the lower towns through to sherpas stories in base camp. There is a great interactive 3d map of Everest and a documented trek to Everest base camp. A really in-depth, thoughtful interactive documentary on this amazing region. Brought to life by beautiful photography and a nice blend of technology.
Created by Pixel Lab (@thinkpixellab) and Microsoft.
Fascinating site about Hashima Island – a small abandoned island once home to a coal mine – the town was abandoned quickly meaning much was left behind. Recently Google Streetview was made made available for the island and this site was put together focussing on interesting locations such as ‘stairway to hell’, and ‘block 65’. Desaturated and with eerie music the site offers a great wrapper for the fascinating imagery – a really atmospheric almost game like experience.
Created by Bryan James (@wengerstoybus).
A micro site accompanying the History Channel’s ‘Perfect Storms’ tv show. A series of scenarios depicting the ‘perfect storm’ from Tokyo to Constantinople – you learn about what created these storms by a number of interactive scenes – for example fragging warm air across the atlantic and so on. Its a nice device to learn about how these storms are created and more more engaging than simply reading a paragraph about it. Some nice effects here and there and CGI heavy video scenes tie it all together.
Created by Secret Location (@secretlocation) and Entertainment One (@entonegroup).
Site promoting Yomitan village in Japan. Loads of nice interactions, animations, and transitions – all wrapped up in a minimal interface with large photography. Love the automatic scrolling – and the way scrolling occurs within the image masks – the way you you enlarge the images to view the detail. Loads of nice little touches.
Fantastic documentary site about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Highlighting the context for what happened, using videos and images – and interesting interviews – even with a section for ‘what if?’ an alternative ending for what might have happened. Lots of really nice user design, transitions and animations – the line is really getting blurred now between what you can achieve with the latest CSS and HTML when compared with Flash. Love the minimal design and smooth animations and interactivity. Also happens to be a fascinating subject – brought to life in a fun and interesting way.
Created by The Martin Agency, @MartinTweets.
