Interactive Annuals Awfully Static

Kevin Temura over at Blue Flavor commented the other day that the recent Communication Arts Interactive Annual misses the mark and I couldn’t agree more. The recent Print Interactive Annual does the same thing. I love a fancy, Flashy website as much as the next guy, and they do deserve accolades.

Yet there’s something missing, and it happens every year. If we’re going to credit great website design, shouldn’t we look beyond the surface? Shouldn’t we consider things that make the web truly interactive, like navigation, content presentation, user interface and usability? What’s funny about all the interactive annuals is that I start to think they pick stuff that will look good in print.

I’d love to see things break out, either with categories or with just more attention paid to the content-rich, highly usable sites out there like Flickr, ESPN.com, The New York Times, The Onion, etc.