Rolls-Royce Motor Cars : Unwriting history

A high-tech photo gallery omits no information about what is depicted.

The Site

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the UK-based luxury car manufacturer, has a company history photo-gallery on the high-speed broadband version of its site that gives no information about what is depicted.

Users with a connection speed of at least 2MB are directed from the home page to a distinct version of the site which uses streaming video and audio to enhance the content. The Rolls-Royce section includes Company History, which opens on an image showing an early model in an Indian-looking setting. A panel of text with its own internal scroll bar is overlaid on the left side of the photograph. To its left is a circular camera icon; clicking on this causes the main image to blur and fade and a display frame is superimposed.

The image gallery within the frame has a set of nine black-and-white photographs of people and locations that can be navigated using ‘Previous/ Next’ options. None of the photographs is captioned or identified by date. A similar feature in the section showcasing the company’s plant at Goodwood does include captioning of each image.

The Takeaway

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ embrace of the possibilities opened up by broadband and new technologies to enrich its online content is a smart piece of brand reinforcement. Many of the qualities with which the company seeks to associate itself – elegant design, stylish features, smooth handling – can be better reflected. Even the provision of a high-end version of the site for high-speed broadband users is in keeping with the brand values. But the lack of captioning in Company History looks horribly like a scratch on the highly-polished paintwork or a nut someone forgot to tighten. Why else would a company history leave viewers to guess who was doing what, where and when?

If the omission were common to other photo galleries on the site, then it could at least be attributed to a triumph of the design team – or a realisation of the marketing slogan “Design without compromise”. As it is, unless someone gets the stencil kit out we may never know if that opening shot really was taken in India, let alone who the man in the pith helmet was.

First published on 22 November, 2007