Miami Ad School

I decided my major about a year ago. It was about half a year ago that I decided that if I were to attend a graduate school of any kind, it would be Miami Ad School. The Miami Ad School is a partner program with Crispin Porter and Borgusky. A very hip, up and coming full service advertising agency. They are based in Miami, Florida (no surprise there) and Boulder, Colorodo.

Miami Ad School's website features a retro/old school video game interface. I believe it is a simple flash-based page with repeating sequences. Despite the simplicity of the aesthetics, the page is fun to look at for several minutes. The website fails in regards to its depth, or lack thereof. After leaving the home page, the website is text-based and bland.

Art and design are linked together in a relationship much like a square with a rectangle: a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not necessarily a square. Similarly, design is art, but art is not necessarily design. I've always thought of art as being a creation that generates opinion(s). Even if this opinion is indifference, it counts as an opinion. The opinion can be favorable or unfavorable as well. Design is a planned expression of art.

In critiquing the site as far as art and design are concerned, I will focus on the home page.

Essentially, the page is divided into 11 links, some of which are related to each other. The links represent different cities in which the school has locations to study/intern at. The cities are represented by a cliche´ symbol from that city. Each city is surrounded by water, as if to signify that nothing else exists in the world other than these cities relevant to the school.

The art is expressed through pixellated graphics that look almost childish, yet still interesting. To spruce up the site more, each city has some sort of action going on within it - Miami has people swimming on the beach, Amsterdam has a spinning windmill, etc. The actions repeat themselves every minute or so. Also, there is a pink flamingo airplane that flies across the entire screen which serves as a great example of isomorphic correspondence as it guides the eye across the page.