on these websites everyone keeps talking about

case in point.

i mean, alright. some of us are forgetting functionality a wee bit.

HRP: kudos on the red smoke. it's visually engaging. i like red and grey together, even if it looks like 80 or so images on iStock. but overall, i'm going to go with a no. it is cool that, if i had a webcam, i could navigate your site with my finger (or something). but i don't. and, moreover, it takes for-ever-er to load. i'm already not interested. it's hard to navigate and hard to understand. HRP? sacrifice some art. especially when it's a wee bit s t o c k y.

R/GA and Grey are still stuck somewhere in the span of last year. come on, it's a spring update. how come Grey looks like the bastard lovechild of a smaller, lesser agency and a Gravitron? at least R/GA is visually pleasing in that flashy, fade-in fade-out javascript sort of way. i just feel like it's nothing i haven't seen before. not bad, but not buzzworthy.

Barbarian is interesting insofar as it's different. it holds with content is king, and, as a blogger, i like that. unfortunately, it also reminds me of--well--a blog. and while that's well and good, i also want it to remind me of an advertising agency, which, it currently does not. i'm not saying it needs more images, but i am saying it needs more style. less newspaper, more colour differentiation, perhaps.

and then, of course, there's Modernista. chances are you've seen it already, but if you haven't, be warned: it will appear on top of this page. the reds and pinks will clash. it will be an eye sore. consider yourself warned. that being said. i initially like this. it's new, it's funky, it's integrated, it's sexy. i'm for it. except for the first time, the links didn't work in my browser, so i was left confused. and then, if you scroll down too fast, the M! site hiccups all over the page. 3.5 stars and my fave of the group.

but you know what other site i really like? Zeus Jones. also funky, integrated, and sexy--but in a different way. the word that jumps to mind is "flatter," but that's not necessarily a bad thing in this site's case, i'd argue. and, kind of like the twitpitch, it speaks for itself. i'm for it. click away.