37signals (37signals.com) is a small (but quickly growing) company that develops web-based project management, contact management, document sharing, and group chat software for individuals and businesses. Their company culture is centered around a striving for simplicity, efficiency (zero meetings), and a sort of frankness. Their website is designed to both communicate their nature as a company and the products they produce. The audience they target varies from individuals interested in the company itself to people looking for the products, so the design is centered around providing answers to both those questions as immediately as possible: the description of the company and the products are both displayed prominently above the fold.

From a visual standpoint, I think it’s a very pretty page. Fairly good typography (although the headings could use a bit more leading and kerning in places and the product rectangles feel a bit chrome-y and heavy in relation to the more spartan type and other imagery).

A large part of 37signals’ marketing tactics focuses on sharing the customers they have, instead of the products themselves, and it are these tactics that are the most ethically questionable and lacking in evidence. Although their products may be used by teams within the large companies they list as customers, it is incredibly doubtful that those entire corporations use their software. It’s not an outright lie, but it is a bit of a distortion of the truth.

Now I don’t mean to be negative towards the home page. As far as corporate home pages go, this stands out above and beyond the rest for effectively recognizing the audience it needs to cater to and delivers the information that audience needs extremely quickly, which is exactly what corporate home pages need to do. People don’t go to them for content or an experience, they go to them for information about the corporation itself, which 37signals’ home page definitely provides.