guerilla research in the biz

One of the things I do from time to time is check out websites of other companies and performers in the biz. I checked out one today (though not the first time I've seen this one) of another performer who works in the same market as I do. I'll refer to this person as "Fabulous" because he/she is a narcissist. If you are familiar with the Harry Potter books think of Gilderoy Lockhart. (JK Rowling has this to say about the character; Lockhart and Fabulous really are 2 peas in a pod.) This person is about as "Fabulous" as having your A/C broken in the middle of a sweltering July heat-wave. Fabulous is annoying at best and at worst has proven to be completely unworthy of trust. Almost everyone in the biz echoes the same sentiments about him/her.

10 years ago I was really "in the loop" so I used to get all the good gossip. Every time one of my buddies (another performer I know) was feeling blue and needed to be cheered up he would call me and ask if I had any new Fabulous stories. He would laugh uproariously at Fabulous's expense. It's kind of sad; I can only surmise that Fabulous has incredibly low self esteem to treat people in the contemptible and nasty manner he/she is known for. There are some inconsistencies and outright lies on his/her website.

In terms of design, the website itself is cumbersome. It's an improvement over the previous version, which opened a new window every time you clicked a page link. So at least the navigation is a bit better. But there are tacky elements to the site. Many details look like they were scanned and pasted in, rather than looking like they are fully integrated. It's one thing to scan in a photo a client sends you or the newspaper section you appeared in last summer. However details that are a permanent part of the site should look like they belong. Other pages look like afterthoughts; again, not fully integrated into the design. In addition there is no consistency from one page to the next in terms of design elements. It just looks like it wasn't thought out well. But that's the norm for Fabulous and has been for as long as I've known him/her.

Why do I want to learn how to properly build my own website? So it doesn't look like that one!