Flash Gurus (Pt III) WEFAIL

MADCAP MAVERICKS

MADCAP MAVERICKS
WEFAIL

Wefail.com home

Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before…
The terrible twosome who have brought humour and lo-fidelity artistry to the masses

WEFAIL is, in fact, a creative collaboration between two men from opposite sides of the globe, united in their off-the-wall approach. They have indeed remarked in the past the reason that their partnership works is in a kind of telepathy for how the other thinks and works – completing each other’s sentences via email. The two men are Martin Hughes (http://martin-h.com) and Jordan Stone (http://sofake.com), hailing from Manchester (United Kingdom) and Austin, Texas (USA) respectively. In an attempt to quickly describe what they represent within the Flash community, it would be important to define their characteristic blend of humour and a deliberately home-made aesthetic. Both are avid fans of The Smiths, and you’d presume it wouldn’t be too much of a leap for Morrissey’s ironic lyrical pathos to have influenced the duo’s very British sense of humour. However, it is in the juxtaposition of very lo-fi, cheap and often childish graphics, with unquestionably great Flash execution that ties many of their best site works together. The two immediate examples are www.wefail.com, their own online home, and the more recent www.julianvelard.com both of which were featured in the Web Designer Gallery pages. Each bears the distinctive hallmarks of cut-out characters and jerky animation, while the latter demonstrates a penchant for lampooning various pop culture references. One of the very interesting aspects of the Julian Velard site, produced to promote the solo musician’s new album, is the willingness to cameo WEFAIL as the designers. This idea of using the ‘celebrity’ of the site authors is pretty rare within the web design scene, and it could be said that Hughes and Stone have pioneered this phenomenon – however modest they try to be about it. “People like Matthew Mahon or Billy Harvey have told us that we have changed their lives”, remarked Stone in an interview for theFWA.com. “It sounds cheesy, but that’s pretty neat.”