Distillery vs. Exchange

Today, a friend and I walked around the Exchange district in Winnipeg, where the Fringe Festival is happening currently (if you're curious about the fringe, go to http://www.winnipegfringe.com/ to check it out.  Sadly, tomorrow is the last day).  The Exchange District is to Winnipeg what the Distillery District is to Toronto, in my opinion.  Re-purposed, old industrial buildings that have become trendy instead of closed.  Our Exchange used to be the Grain Exchange district, back in Winnipeg's glory days when we were one of the leading grain exporters in Canada, or something like that.  FYI, Winnipeg: the Exchange is WAY cooler than its website.  I think it should have some photography similar to the stuff on this blog about Toronto, a city that I now worship: http://www.blogto.com/  This blog is run by Fresh Daily, a private company.

However, Toronto's official website is as lame as Winnipeg's is, so I guess we're running neck-and-neck in terms of the less-than-cool facade we're officially presenting to the rest of the world.

Sorry about all the apparently wasted space around the image here, but this is what it looks like when you go to the Toronto page.  I think people must have thought that this looked clean.  I don't.  Have a nice simple layout (like mine, heh heh) and you can have as many words as you like.  Also, the pictures are too busy.  And all the colors on the tabs. 

I cannot tell you how stodgy this layout is.  The gray gradient in the background?  The ancient photography?  This website has looked like this for at LEAST five years, since I first started visiting it for recycling days or something.  I think that blue must be 'the Canadian city's' official website color or something.  Also, the tabs at the top look like a seventh-grader made them.  Sorry, Winnipeg.  NO.

Here is the sweet Distillery District's website as compared to the Exchange District's:

White background, trendy hipster, a revolving selection of pictures with people actually IN them, visiting the area you are advertising for.  Nice calm fonts and colors.  A cute little "antique" image to indicate that the district is historical.

I don't mean to be hard on Winnipeg, because I do live here, but really?  Can't we all agree that crisp, white backgrounds and letters that don't yell at you in abrasive, all-caps fonts are what's in right now?  This site looks like a forgotten afterthought, when the exchange is actually full of current, artsy things to do.  Invest some money, Winnipeg.  For the good of us all.

Anyways, that was a huge tangent.  What I really meant to show you was the ridiculously cute little bookstore I found at the Fringe:

A box of books!  The walls look so thin.  And the ladies selling the books ducked out so we could have a nice picture.  I wanted them to stay, but they laughed and ran away.  Also, I forgot to get the name of the place.

Look how compact it is!

Posting these pictures makes me think of Erik Heywood.  His blog is kind of an "all you ever wanted to know about dorking out about bookshelf design" website.