Winthrop Research Group
They don't build 'em like they used to... thank goodness
In the late spring of 2000 my friend Rich Kolikof asked me to build a site for his company, a straight brochure piece that would showcase his account list and passively educate prospects in his field: sourcing of high-level managers and engineers in the microelectronics industry.
Being familiar with the hands-off style - the value of which I was to learn during subsequent engagements - Rich answered my questions, took the best of my advice, and handed me a stack of agreed-upon Microsoft Word files with the directive to build a site around the copy they contained.
This project was undertaken during the stage in the development of my technical skills at which I was still using CSS for DHTML shininess alone. Given the shortcomings of Netscape 4's rendering capabilities, it should come as no surprise that I implemented the page layout of this site with markup tables.
The next project for which I took end-to-end responsibility was put into production a year later, and unlike the WRG site did rely entirely upon CSS for page layout (A-level support for Netscape 4 notwithstanding).
Pretty pictures
This site shows all of the hallmarks of the era during which it was designed: animated splash page, slices everywhere, prominent drop-shadows, all-Verdana-all-the-time, and more.
However, I consider this site remarkable for four reasons.
I designed it - all of it
The colors, the art direction, and the illustration were results of my choices from the ground up. The only areas in which others made significant contributions were copy (written by Rich), and the web2mail script, which will be easy to identify if you were building SMB sites during the same period.
I would trust this site in nearly anyone's hands
Production sites really don't get to be any simpler than this one.
It points out to you, the Gentle Reader, that yes, I really have been around at least that long
...With all that longevity implies, especially the ability to wade through what by Web yardsticks might be considered primordial muck. I can't say that I would meet the prospect with the proverbial bright eyes and bushy tail, but I could meet it all the same.
This site has held up over time
Finally, there stands the longevity of this site. The great majority of my other projects have since been redesigned, in whole or in part, by other vendors... but the WRG site still stands as I launched it back-in-the-day. This is due partly to Rich's capacity for parsimony, but when I look at the site now, I find that I would not be ashamed to deliver user experience of this caliber to a client even today (though I probably wouldn't be as enthusiastic about Verdana).