The premise is this: take an attractive bunch of twentysomethings, throw them in a big old beach house, give them a smokin' Web site, and ask them to share their lives electronically for all the world to see. The result comes off as something between a diary and a photo album--a PG Web melodramatic romantic comedy...sans true romance.
There are many amazing aspects to The Spot, regardless of literary inclinations. The site is truly a cultural icon of our time, an evolutionary step in the art of storytelling, and a great example of what can be done with design online.
The scariest aspect, however, is how addictive The Spot can become.
Once you check in, there's a good chance you'll be sucked in...to return again and again. Since diary entries are posted each night (although not for each of the Spot cast-, er...housemates), you'll find yourself frequently stopping by The Spot to catch up on what's happening. If you get really hooked, you might check in once a day. If you've gotten things under control, you might stop by once or twice a week.
The Spot sprang to life through the efforts of Prophecy Entertainment, the interactive division of Fattal & Collins, a Marina del Rey design and advertising agency. The site, which is the brainchild of Prophecy's Scott Zakarin, went online on June 7 and generates a staggering amount of traffic for a noncommercial venture.
Kay Dangaard of Fattal & Collins told us the site "now averages 62,000 page hits per day, and has gone as high as 104,000 hits in one day." To further illustrate how readers are engaged by the site, she went on to explain that on an average day, "The Spot will receive more than 300 email messages, coming from 32 countries as far-flung as New Zealand, Afghanistan, the Netherlands, and South Africa."
It's been featured on countless "what's cool" pages, and holds the dubious distinction of being simultaneously picked as both Cool Site of the Day, and Worst Site of the Day. Nonetheless, The Spot is so cool that it was nominated for Glen Davis' Cool Site of the Year. And all this time, The Spot has been operating without any visible commercial sponsorship. When a can of soda appears in a photograph, readers have been known to flame with "Aha! We got ya!" emails.
Designing The Spot...
Design happens quickly at The Spot, with constant nightly posting deadlines. Pages are turned around on a daily basis as the photographs are taken and the diary entries are written. As amazing as it may seem, the Spot mates you know on-screen are responsible for writing their own copy, er...diary entries. Design, however, is left to the designers.
Spot producer, Webmaster and technical wizard, Troy Bolotnick, clued us in to the workings of the Spot designers. "The artwork for the site is created on Power Macintosh. The staff use a number of programs, including Fractal Design Painter, HSC Live Picture, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator." All the artwork is original--including the textured backgrounds--with everything having been created exclusively for the site.
A different textured background is used for each page. Much care is taken to see that the backgrounds do not overpower the text entries. While they can, on occasion, get just a little too dark, the subdued tones and motifs in the backgrounds generally provide an enriched feel without affecting legibility. The designers work hard to tie the backgrounds in to the photographs, as Troy explains, "sometimes picking up the pattern off a blanket, or digitizing three-dimensional objects on the scanner."
Large images are saved as JPEG format files, which provides a high level of compression in addition to a more photographic appearance. Smaller images, such as navigational buttons, are stored in GIF 89a format, taking advantage of the format's transparency feature.
Many of the images incorporate soft drop shadows. Since the JPEG format does not support transparency within Web pages, rendering the larger images in JPEG format called for a work- around. In order to create a nice, soft, floating drop shadow on JPEG files, the designers rendered the images onto the same textured backgrounds (as on the Web pages) within Photoshop. The effect is an excellent floating appearance that's hard to discern between image and page background.
Like most graphic-intensive Web sites, The Spot's pages are HTML-coded for Netscape Navigator 1.1. A disclaimer on the Spot Virgins page tells of this fact, and jumps to Netscape's FTP site. However, for those unfortunate enough not to use Netscape, Troy explained that pages are tested with various browsers on both Windows and Macintosh.
The most is made of HTML's limited typographic offerings. Most journal entries are set large with a <FONT SIZE=5> command. The <PRE> command is used to open up spacing in places. The Back Track calendar pages are expertly created with HTML table commands.
Section headers--and the Spot logo itself--make use of Template Gothic, a typeface designed by Barry Deck, which is available from the Emigre type foundry (916.451.4344). The typeface is subject to all kinds of pixel-twisting effects, with great results. (Author's note: I may be partial to Template Gothic, as it's been a favorite of mine for years. If you don't like it, well, that's your opinion...you probably set your heads in Hobo and your body copy in Souvenir.)
While The Spot is designed on Macintosh, Troy looked elsewhere for the server platform. The Spot began life running on a Pentium computer with NCSA 1.41 Web server software. After the first three weeks of its existence, they switched software to Netscape's Netsite. As this article was being written, they were in the process of switching hardware to a Pentium computer (also running Netsite).
In The Spot Works...
Russell Collins, president of Fattal & Collins, says the future of The Spot holds great promise. He let on that any one of a number of things may be in the works, including a television pilot, an interactive CD-ROM, and other licensing opportunities.
What's coming up on The Spot's Web site? A voice! Troy tells us that Real Audio ("Spot Speak") should be online by the time this column is printed. There are a number of QuickTime movies scattered throughout the site, and it's likely the designers will continue to sprinkle them in. As new technology is developed, The Spot promises to be among the first to deploy.
We cruised out of The Spot with just one question left to ask--where are the T-shirts?