Beautiful but usable?
New website from Jonny Ive and Marc Newsome’s new(ish) design firm - LoveFrom. It is, as we’d expect, beautiful. The many comma animations (refresh the page a few times) are delightful.
But, is the page usable? It took me a good minute to realize that you can scroll to see more text. No scroll bars. No cheeky text above the fold. Just blank space.
Affordances like that are a cue to users that there’s more. It makes a site more engaging and accessible. Otherwise, you ask the user to expend cognitive energy to engage with you. Sure, it may not be much, but it is still requiring effort on the user that should be expended by designers at the start.
They’re both titans and the aesthetic of the page is on par with the visual appeal of his work. But it’s not accessible.
I expect accessibility from Ive and Newsome. Not just love.