It seems the Ogilvy umbrella is determined to bring back basic html as a trend and inspire you to brush off your hand-coding skills.  Last week we reported on Ogilvy North America’s attempt at reverse-credibilty through deliberately, dorkishly bad hand-coded web design. This time around, they offer up a much more visually impressive instance of it in their site for Levi’s Copper Jeans.

Coming from OgilvyOne/Singapore, the approach here is different—the Levi's Copper site actually announces itself as being an html-only site done to serve the “back to basics” aesthetic also espoused by this particular line of Levi’s jeans.  The site’s most noticeable nods to retro html coding are in the big grey navigation buttons, pulldown menus, and the use of large image “slices.” But you won’t find annoying gif animations or the early web’s inattention to flowing layout design. 

For a consumer-targeted site, it has to be said they're not quite placing usability first. The site has dropdown menus placed to emphasize certain design details of the jeans: the pockets, waistband, and fly, but this requires a horizontal scroll which is perhaps a less effective homage to retro-web design. But overall, the Levi’s Copper site strikes me as a nice way of stepping back from the “Web 2.0” trend where suddenly every single site has a slick, flat 2-color scheme featuring a logo with some kind of gradient , a video of some sort, and a name that screams “we are hi-tech!”

It is not relying on the faux-user-generated-content look that is quickly becoming as mainstream as the slickness it rebelled against.  It’s a breath of fresh air that the Levi’s Copper site is not pretending to be a personal site instead of a commercial site, and it is not trying to fake-blog its way to coolness. Now that’s what I call “back to basics.”