This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Visit the Product Blog for more information on our products.

I think the near ubiquity of broadband internet access has made this possible. The thing that’s really interesting to me is how people are very paranoid of image heavy sites (particularly clients) because of technology that prohibited that kind of engaging design from 6-10 years ago!

It’s funny what sticks in people’s minds like “Content is King!” and “Images should be used sparingly.”

Well…

Content IS King unless your content is inaccurate or poorly written. Unless you’re going for a minimal design images shouldn’t scare you off either.

I agree about the comment related to background images and the combination of stretched and fixed elements. It certainly is becoming a more popular trend and I think it makes for a clean look on many different resolutions.

It’s getting harder and harder to extract the useful information from this blog. This constant photo stream and other micro blog posts have got to stop—please move them to twitter where they belong. I really don’t want to unsubscribe from SVN , because this blog does (now with lesser frequency) contain excellent content.

I love his music and now I love his website!

This site is just bad, I hate the auto start music and the noise it makes when you mouse over the links. Yeah, it is bold (if that is what you want to call it) but fresh and interesting? SvN has criticized a lot better sites than this.

I like the trend that’s grown steadily over the last couple years toward background elements that stretch to reach the vertical or horizontal bounds of the browser window.

Your monitor must not be big enough. I have a 30” monitor and the background stops “stretching” well before that. It’s a just a big background. But nothing to get too excited about.

Love the arrow key navigation. Nice.

Now every time I heard the words “bold, fresh” I think of Bill O’Reilly cringe

Agree with Mike. Autoplaying music, arrow controls that OVERRIDE THE BROWSER shortcuts for forward and back, strict hierarchy that makes it feel like you’re using Gopher for no good reason…etc, etc… the look doesn’t do it for me either, but that’s aesthetics. As a functional website, it’s horrid.