Demise of Deepend leaves a legacy of classic, cool design.(discussion about why Deepend folded)(Brief Article)

Deepend's wealth of talent may have been its Achilles heel,

The Deepend website was a design classic. You'll have to take that on trust because it's no longer there. Where it used to be, there's just a plain notice informing you that the digital communications company Deepgroup was put into liquidation with the loss of 180 jobs on 24 September.

Still, there are many other examples of the agency's award-winning work that will be around for the foreseeable future -- conran.co.uk is a pretty good example.

Most people in the industry were genuinely shocked at Deepend's demise because during its relatively short life, it set such influential creative standards. John Bains, the chairman of Lateral, says: "It's more than a shock. It's depressing for all of us who are grade A creatively, but who aren't the biggest agencies in the world. Some of the work it produced is among the best there has ever been."

Most websites are remorselessly hierarchical. A menu of menus, lists within lists. And the deeper you go into the structure, the more likely it is that you'll arrive at something that looks very like a mail order catalogue, a newspaper column or a page from a company report -- some plonky text wrapped around a plonky picture of the chairman. Most designers try to distract attention from structure with loads of garish graphics and logos--the cyberspace equivalent of brass bands and bunting.

Deepend's great vision was to march in the opposite direction. It made a virtue of structure. It played cute games, fusing form and content by animating the raw typographic materials of lists. For instance, the use of microscopically tiny text that warps and expands as the cursor passes over it, or letters and numbers that spin and rise to the top of the screen and settle, bobbing like bubbles, when they get there.

And at the bottom of the structural hierarchy you'll find the information you want -- but no frills. Deepend never felt compelled to over-elaborate. It waged a single-minded campaign against clutter. Some found it intellectually austere, while others celebrated its 21st century minimalist cool.