Hasta La Ideas

Preloading screen for Nvidia: Speak Visual site by Odopod, 2008

Ah the humble preloading screen, you kept us entertained (or tried to) as our crappy connection struggled to cope with the latest Flash-tastic websites. Now, at last, you have your chance to shine…

Brooklyn’s Big Spaceship has set up Pretty Loaded, an archive of website preloading screens – the visuals that come up while you are waiting for a website to load. The agency’s Michael Lebowitz describes it as “a history/gallery/short-attention-span-theater of preloaders”.

For The Detective, 2009, AgencyNet

Most of the work on the site so far is from Big Spaceship themselves, with a few contributions from Firstborn, Agencynet and Odopod, but Lebowitz wants to encourage contributions from the entire industry “to make it a living, growing little piece of internet history. It’s also a nice way of agencies showing fraternity instead of the usual acrimony.”

As connection speeds increase, Lebowitz says that the site will act as “a tribute to a vanishing art form amid a constantly changing digital landscape”. Although, judging from most of the sites we visit, the preloader will be around for a while yet.

For Sony Pictures’ Stranger Than Fiction site, 2006, Big Spaceship

For Office Max Arcade Print Jogger, 2007, Big Spaceship

Details of how to contribute are on the site