The Cattery

The Cattery

Dawning of a new Age

8 August 2007
Filed under Design, Text, The Interweb

A few people have asked for my thoughts on the redesign of The Age and SMH websites, but to be honest I haven’t really had to time to put my gut reaction (“do not want”) to the torch. My instinct is that the new one is more cluttered and has a less obvious hierarchy than the previous design those sites shared, but clutter and hierarchy always feel wrong when something you look at thirty times a day is redesigned.

I know that it’s slower to load than it was before, and I know that there are literally 15 glaring rendering errors in Safari, which just shits me. I’m also convinced that it’s a mistake to put the text in the central column, flanked by ads and images - I really like that the Times puts its feature image in the centre of the page.

There’s a paucity of white space, and that which there is is poorly distributed. I wish the weather AND the search weren’t freaking SPONSORED, and I wish that the time weren’t printed in big ugly red Arial Black(!), since my computer does one thing very well, and that’s tell the time. I reckon the menu is suckier than it was before. I’m glad they’ve centered the masthead though.

Um. I think I’ll probably chuck something more detailed up on the Inventive Labs blog at some point, when I’ve had a chance to get used to it and think about it a bit more.

Views from the Floor

Ally says:

I reckon they've taken inspiration from Guardian.co.uk. But... tickled it with the ugly stick.

martin says:

Exactly. They wanted the Guardian but ended up with MySpace. Fairfax must lose a heap of money on their online activities if they need so much advertising. Every page is drenched in ads, usually poorly placed or given a prominence greater than the news item itself.

I agree the heirarchy isn't obvious and visually it's a dog's ass, with elements of the previous design still scattered here and there. Truly, a Barry Crocker.

Chai says:

Maybe it's a familiarity thing but I prefer the old layout.
Felt 'warmer'.

Speak, friend, and enter


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