I'm very pleased to announce a brand new design for ReadWriteWeb, including a new look n' feel and new logo. The design was created and implemented by San Francisco design firm Ideacodes - specifically Emily Chang, Max Kiesler and Bryan Collick. Personally I've been a big fan of Ideacodes for a long time, so I was thrilled to work with them on this new design.
It's been a year or so since our last major re-design. And this is the first RWW design where I haven't been involved in the coding myself.
The goal of the re-design was to achieve a fresh and bold new look, with cleaner layout and CSS. We also hope the new design will encourage more community on RWW, enhance the way our content is presented, and overall give the brand some oomph.
First up, you will notice that we have a new logo. We've kept the yin-yang symbol, as that to me has always represented 'read/write' and the harmony of that concept - but the symbol has been modernized. The logo type is bolder and emphasizes the letters RWW. And can you spot the subtle thing that's been removed from the logo? The '/' between Read and Write is now gone. Although I have always thought that the slash was meaningful (or maybe I just thought it was cool!), in practical terms it was a slight hindrance - in terms of spelling our name and perhaps even making it difficult to type the URL. So from now on we'll be calling ourselves ReadWriteWeb, or RWW for short.
Finally on the logo, the design buffs among you will appreciate me telling you that the font is univers. For the body text, the font is Arial - a cleaner, more modern and readable font than the Lucinda Grande/Verdana we previously used there.
The other major change is that the site now has a white background, with a distinctive red header. Over the past year I had felt the red background of our old design was overwhelming for some readers. On the other hand the red is closely associated with ReadWriteWeb and lots of people like it, so I was keen to keep it in some form. The new header, I hope you'll agree, is distinctive and the bold splash of red makes our brand stand out.
Personally I love the new logo and header, but I am certain they will provoke different opinions. Why? Because that was the case with the ReadWriteWeb authors during the design process! That's good though - I'd much rather have a bold design that gets different reactions, than a bland one that gets no reaction ;-)
Other new features you will see on the new ReadWriteWeb:
Plus of course we've kept and enhanced features such as 'Featured Posts', 'Recent Jobs', the swicki search and more.
We have more new features in the works, so keep an eye out for those over the next month or so.
A huge thanks to Ideacodes for their inspiring vision and hard work. I want to also thank our web hosts Media Temple, who worked beyond the call of duty to help us get the new site up and running. Also thank you to Six Apart for their help and advice regarding Movable Type 4.
Let us know what you think of the new design in the comments. As with any new design rollout, there may be a few little bugs to be cleaned up, bits to tweak, things to align, etc. The OpenID login for example isn't quite ready. So the new design is still a bit of a 'Work in Progress'.
We're keen to hear your feedback and any suggestions! And shout out if you come across things that need fixing.
Comments
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Congratulations, Richard! We've really enjoyed working with on this and the next phase of features. Look forward to reader comments.
Posted by: Emily Chang | December 17, 2007 12:07 PMThe new design makes RRW look more a mainstream site than ever before..but I need to get used to it first.
Posted by: Yakov | December 17, 2007 12:49 PMAbsolutely fantastic. Emily knows that usability thingy. Congratulations! ideacodes and rww.
I recommend everyone to add ideacodes's ehub to shortlist too.
Posted by: Sinan Ata | December 17, 2007 12:50 PMTop notch redesign, hats off to all involved. Very easy on the eyes, classy, cool.
Posted by: Jeff Crites | December 17, 2007 12:51 PMRichard I really like the new design. It was a long time overdue. Additionally, i like the new features and more importantly the readability of this site compared to the rest. It is a lot better because your posts are summerised to only 1 para which gives a user more chance to quickly browse the site more efficiently and also give u a chance to gain more page views. Overall, well done.
Posted by: Steven Finch | December 17, 2007 12:52 PMRichard,
Great job on the new look and feel. I quite prefer the white/red color scheme, and the empty space makes it feel very web 2.0.
Also, the addition of navigation by subject area across the top is a huge improvement for me and makes it a lot easier to quickly find content in targeted areas.
Keep up the good work!
Posted by: Brian Flannery | December 17, 2007 1:01 PMI really like the layout and simplicity of the new design. Congratulations on a great success. Keep it up.
Posted by: Matthew Griffin | December 17, 2007 1:11 PMGreat job on the re-design. Very effective. Well done.
Posted by: Jonathan Hill | December 17, 2007 1:14 PMWebsite design is good, but logo is really, really bad.
Overall, I'm sorry to say that your old look was much better.
Cheers,
Adrian
Posted by: Adrian | December 17, 2007 1:27 PMNice redesign, I like the clean look and greater use of white space. It's a lot easier on the eyes.
Posted by: Rick Curran | December 17, 2007 1:31 PMI think somebody is in serious denial :)
Posted by: Adrian | December 17, 2007 1:45 PMVery well done. I particularly like the RSS emphasis in the header space. Kudos!
Posted by: Jason Falls | December 17, 2007 1:51 PMReally great site design. Wish I had the cash to get Emily to design our site!
Posted by: Jack | December 17, 2007 1:58 PMGuys it looks awesome! Much easier to navigate!
Posted by: Lapp | December 17, 2007 2:00 PMRock on, Read/WriteWeb!!!
Posted by: Alex Iskold | December 17, 2007 2:06 PMgreat!!!...good look..!!!
Posted by: Anpy | December 17, 2007 2:16 PMI love the redesign, congrats!
Posted by: Peter Dorsi | December 17, 2007 2:26 PMSome criticism, intended to be constructive as I am a regular reader.
Overall, its overstated and so far overrated.
Arial in a logo is nothing to brag about. It is, however, one of the more readable fonts displayed on screen- for copy.
The idea that RWW is short for Read Write Web is not true phonetically. Try saying the 2 and you'll see what I mean. So it does not have the advantage that say, CNN, has over it's full name. Read/Write is superior. And the slash is nothing to be ashamed about, it makes sense: you can't do both at the same time. It's read or write. As for successful examples of the slash in branding, see slashdot and slashfilm.
But going with abbreviation execution, the RWW is overstated in the arial logotype. The RWW letters are solid black on a white bg and more than double the size of the rest of the text in grey. The kerning is so bad I thought it was rendered by the browser until I noticed I couldn't select it- maybe it is. The black, red, and white is a lot of high contrast. Again, heavily overstated, both generally and in the abbreviation theme, which is not strong to begin with.
Moving out from the logo to navigation. Rounded and squared corners can fit together, but I don't think they do here. May be it's the seemingly arbitrary difference in padding height between the above and below nav. I would say pick round or squared and get be consistent with padding. Again, the hovers are overstated.. subtlety suggested. This high contrast is unnecessary. And then after all that high contrast hover, the 'tab' doesn't even show state after clicked! Referring to the below logo nav, and the above logo sends me away to another design.
Overall, overstated, a little sloppy and unfinished. Back to the drawing board to think this branding and ui through. Guessing that this may be the result of attempting to appease conflicting opinions through out the design process. Save opinions till the comp is fully fleshed out, then select one.. no mixing and matching.
If you want to modernize and go 2.0, then do it. Go with a softer color palette, mix in some MS Trebuchet, bump up your font sizes, sprinkle in some bigger buttons and spread on your ajax library: jquery, prototype.. or abstract the js altogether with ext.
Posted by: Winston | December 17, 2007 2:27 PMI never visit your site (hooray for rss), but the new design looks nice. I'm not so sure about the typography of the new logo though.. The difference in fontsizes is too great and the big screaming letters don't feel right next to the yin-yang symbol.
Posted by: Wout | December 17, 2007 2:27 PMEveryone saying the design is great must have their ad blocker turned on because its pretty disgusting having a giant ad take up the first 100 or more pixels of your site. Get realistic and let the readers enjoy your site without trying to jam a $2k dollar a month ad down our throats. Without the ad the design is ok but having that ad just totally kills any thought of having a good design in both a graphic design and user experience design.
Posted by: Dan Shields | December 17, 2007 2:36 PMI can't remember if you had a big ad at the top before but if it was it wasn't done to this degree of ugliness.
It definitely looks clean, but I find on the article body area that there is too much white. It may be because on the left hand of the article you have a white margin to the edge of the page, then on the right hand side there's just ads (especially at the beginning of an article).
Having some more color on the site to make it easier for my eyes to focus on the content would be helpful.
Posted by: Malcolm Bastien | December 17, 2007 2:46 PMi don't like it. the logo looks aweful and the red is killing my eyes.
Posted by: dirk | December 17, 2007 2:56 PMWhat a brilliant idea, very cool... I specifically like the "Popular Posts" at the top of the page, It's very easy to navigate. Can't wait to see other features guys!
Nhick
Posted by: ITrush | December 17, 2007 2:59 PMhttp://www.itrush.com
I can't get past the logo. It's horrible. It's as if it was designed in Microsoft Word using base fonts by a sales manager 5 minutes before a PowerPoint presentation. Really, this is not the identifier for a brand, it's a wireframe sketch for a hierarchy of how to address the name of the company. Please, please for the love of good design and leadership, REDESIGN that logo NOW. It will be the bane of your site for years to come. Other than that, I like the new design, and of course, the content of the site is world-class.
Posted by: Mark | December 17, 2007 3:17 PMI really dont like the new logo.
Posted by: Nico | December 17, 2007 3:25 PMAlthough I am really a huge fan of #B80201 (the "Read/Write Red") and I love the use of so much negative space, I must agree with some of the posts above that the new logo isn't all that flattering.
I'm a regular reader of R/W2 and I believe that it is one of the best web technology blogs out there. It's smart, sophisticated and well-written. If I read something on another similar blog, I know I can count on R/W2 to cover the same story with a lot more useful commentary and a whole better editing.
The new logo doesn't bring any of those thoughts or emotions unto my head. Don't get me wrong, I love the Yin-Yang button thingy--but for the sake of all that is typographically flattering, please change the typography for the main title. The kerning is a bit off, and frankly, the choice of type doesn't reflect the blog's personality well.
I also agree with Winston with the use of "RWW".. Personally, I love the slash in the former "name", and I'm keeping it in my RSS Reader. Don't expect me to change the title to RWW soon--cause frankly, I just doesn't work.
And finally, I hope you do something about the rest of your page. Sure you put a lot of effort over getting the header/top-part of the page right--with all the navigational goodness you could cramp into the 191pixels of the header div.. But you forgot about the rest of your page, like your footer (which deserves some attention--it's as bland as Arial.)
Hope to see more improvements.. And Hooray for R/W Web.. :P
Posted by: Keeto | December 17, 2007 3:30 PMIt feels as if I am on TechCrunch but with the green replaced by red...
The old design was warmer and more welcoming, this one feels cold and impersonal.
Sorry, but I really prefer the old design...
Posted by: Johan | December 17, 2007 3:32 PMwhere is the design? red colored bar across top. I'm blown. logo as said before is really really bad. sorry, this is not doing it for me, i hope it didn't take longer than 2 days to build it sure don't look like it.
Posted by: Mike B | December 17, 2007 3:48 PMDespite having a 1280x1024 monitor at work, it's rare that I have my Firefox 2.x set to fullscreen. Currently I have my browser sized so that about 20% of your page is set to scroll to the right, leaving 0px margin on the left which unappealing and awkward to read.
Also, I find the red overpowering and NOT great visual design that it is so much wider than the banner ad at the top.
Posted by: anonymous | December 17, 2007 3:52 PMIdeacodes seems to have done some nice site redesigns for others so I presume the problem here was client intervention/meddling as RWW does not reflect their normal quality. There is nothing positive that can be said about that design -101, F grade logo. Sorry Richard.
There's other things I like but the logo/header distracts me from those.
Posted by: PXLated | December 17, 2007 4:01 PMI like the new design. But what's up with that logo? Jing-jang? WTF!?
Posted by: Sotek | December 17, 2007 4:16 PMI'd have to agree. The type for your logo is not exactly up to par with the writing on this site.
Posted by: Dennis | December 17, 2007 4:42 PMi think i liked the older one, mainly the logo and the background tile.
Posted by: Tom | December 17, 2007 4:45 PMI must agree with Winston's constructive criticism concerning the logo: The kerning in the logo is slightly off and the harsh contrast makes it hard on the eyes.
But overall I love reading Read Write Web (with or without the slash) and congratulations with the redesign.
Posted by: Anne Helmond | December 17, 2007 5:50 PMI like it, I've been looking for a way to present my current lead story, along with summaries of other recent stories, along with recent comments, etc - and this combines them all. The only criticisms I would voice would be the header banner ad; I really think it pushes everything down too far, I prefer not having that whtspace above, and just have the ad integrated into the header; but I'm sure that was considered. Also, the line sep the main content from the right columns; it intersects with a line on the footer, but not on the header...just doesn't tie together like the rest of the site.
Overall, looks like a great upgrade - final query; would you be releasing this theme, perhaps in a neutral colour? I can see it being really nice for anyone looking to upgrade their site.
Posted by: fak3r | December 17, 2007 5:51 PMCongrats to the whole RWW team, and good work as always from Ideacodes!
Posted by: Anil DashCan we get a nice print css file? That would be helpful to save paper when I print some of these out to read at weekly staff meetings. :)
Posted by: Rylan | December 17, 2007 6:07 PMA good design.
What I like is the details, like the transparent boxes when you enter your information in the comment section. Details make the difference.
Well Done
Posted by: JohnofScribbleSheet | December 17, 2007 6:31 PMVery nice design. This one is cleaner than the old one.
Nice work.
Posted by: Marino | December 17, 2007 6:46 PMThe Logo wastes a lot of space and looks like my one that my son in junior high created. (The YinYang is really trite - you gotta kill that.) I know the previous color palette was red but this seems bolder and red means stop to many of us.
The formatting of the posts with image badge is really nice. I like it much more than many of the other blogs I read.
Also, where did those Snaps go they were helpful.
Posted by: Steven Thomas | December 17, 2007 7:17 PMI'm a BIG fan of RWW, but this look'n feel will probably require a lot of getting used to. The key learning fm a similar change we made a Tribe was that plain white backgrounds with vibrant red and black give people headaches. It was tough for me to believe this too, but it's just not pleasant to look at w/o squinting a bit. Anyway, as w/any change, it's tough to make every one happy, but I can't help but to think that this vibrant mix will really turn a lot of people off.
Posted by: P-Air | December 17, 2007 7:51 PMThe new design is great.
The logo is, um, not great at all.
OK, really, the logo is a complete turn off. It looks hokey.
Posted by: Eric Gruber | December 17, 2007 8:14 PMI'm sorry, but this new design looks like a step in the wrong direction, especially the logo type. Also, what happened to the /? I thought that was the whole point - "Read/Write Web", not "Read, Write, Web"?
Posted by: Aesqe | December 17, 2007 8:21 PMsorry this is probably the last time I'll visit your site, now I'll simply stick to the feed.
The site is nothing to rave about - never really been a fan of Emily Chung's work. Not my taste.
As many have said here, the logo, is well not really a logo at all. It's a Yin/Yang symbol with over sized text along side.
The top red block, looks like the navigation was slapped on as an afterthought, and kinda gets lost. And as for that honking great big banner at the top *shudder*
A good site redesign recently was GigaOm, elegant, clean, fresh. This new design here is ... well not so nice - sorry Richard.
Posted by: Mr K | December 17, 2007 8:25 PMSorry that should be Emily Chang in my post above.
Also, what happened to the feeds? No longer does my browser auto-detect your feeds. Sorry, I really think this design has missed the fundamentals
Posted by: Mr K | December 17, 2007 8:35 PMI don't really like the style - looks like a red clone of TechCrunch - and in particular, the logo is terrible! Perhaps a better logo will help the site look more professional, but it looks like the logo was created with MS Paint, or Word Art.
Posted by: stuart | December 17, 2007 8:42 PMThank God for RSS readers...
I actually liked the old look and feel A LOT better than this. I'm sure part of it is just getting used to a new look, but I'm not sure about the logo (specifically the font part) at all.
Posted by: hash | December 17, 2007 10:02 PMHi Richard (and Team),
I agree with most people who said that they didn't like the logo. It looks "weird", like something unfinished, or I don't know.
Posted by: Tim | December 17, 2007 10:13 PMThen the site is a bit "too" white. There is some weird use of whitespace (the footer for instance) and looks "poor" overall. The tag cloud is nice, but lost in the middle of so many ads... I liked the old one better, even though there are some good ideas in this new design too (categories, popular posts...)
Sorry if this comment is not really constructive, I just "don't get" the new design...
Looks great Richard - congrats.
Posted by: Don Jones | December 17, 2007 10:29 PMBring back the old logo, please.
Posted by: chris | December 17, 2007 11:21 PMUnless Google Reader is having some issues (no comment), I think the site redesign is messing with my RWW RSS feed. I keep getting the same RWW posts - starting with the redesign announcement - showing up as new/unread in my reader.
Posted by: Luke G | December 17, 2007 11:27 PMNot as mobile friendly. :(
Posted by: iPhone Reader | December 17, 2007 11:27 PMPersonally, I could without the page content starting half-way down the page... do you have to take up so much screen with the logo, navigation and banner?
Posted by: LSF | December 17, 2007 11:29 PMHmm...I'm not sure what to make of th redesign just yet. Over time it may have a usability advantage, but right now it seems just a bit cluttered. So to speak, the hierarchy of navigation isn't clearly defined. I love RWW so I'll continue to read and hopefully the new changes wear on users like a great cd.
PS. I do agree, the logo has to go.
Posted by: Heelcandy | December 17, 2007 11:29 PMyay ! It looks cool :)
Posted by: Dung Nguyen | December 17, 2007 11:58 PMI like the new design, but prefer the old logo. The font on this one looks too pixely.
Posted by: Ray Grieselhuber | December 18, 2007 1:09 AMThe new header is too wide and looks heavy. Hope that content can support it in the long run.
Posted by: Search The Tail | December 18, 2007 2:15 AMI like it! Very modern.
Posted by: Sarah | December 18, 2007 2:47 AMThanks everyone for your feedback, it is much appreciated. And it was all so positive until Winston came along (#18) ;-) I'm going to post a response to Winston first, and then tackle the rest.
Winston said: "Arial in a logo is nothing to brag about. It is, however, one of the more readable fonts displayed on screen- for copy."
RM: Sorry, that was my mistake - the Arial is the body text (which, as you pointed out Winston, is very good for copy). The logo in fact uses univers. I have corrected the post regarding that.
Winston said: "And the slash is nothing to be ashamed about, it makes sense: you can't do both at the same time."
RM: I never said I was ashamed of it, simply that for the branding it had its issues.
Winston then had some criticisms of the logo, which I noticed were repeated by nearly every commenter after. While I respect the fact that not everybody likes it, I stand by the design - which is deliberately bold and emphasizes the letters RWW. I explained why we went in this direction in the post.
Winston concluded that the logo is "heavily overstated, both generally and in the abbreviation theme, which is not strong to begin with."
RM: Well firstly I don't agree with his analysis of the "abbreviation theme" - it missed the point that it is all about the branding. Secondly what is overstated to some is bold and stands out to others. The latter is what we aimed for and personally I think it achieved that. But your mileage may vary, I guess.
Winston said: "Guessing that this may be the result of attempting to appease conflicting opinions through out the design process. Save opinions till the comp is fully fleshed out, then select one.. no mixing and matching."
RM: This is an extraordinary assumption to make. "Conflicting opinions"? There were none. Winston, up to this point your critique was valid. I didn't agree with a lot of it, but at least it didn't jump to conclusions like this.
Finally, Winston said: "If you want to modernize and go 2.0, then do it. Go with a softer color palette, mix in some MS Trebuchet, bump up your font sizes, sprinkle in some bigger buttons and spread on your ajax library: jquery, prototype.. or abstract the js altogether with ext."
Um, actually I *don't* want to "go 2.0". That is precisely the kind of cliched design we wanted to avoid! Instead we were after a clean, modern design.
Anyway, I appreciate your feedback Winston and I'm glad you're a regular reader. I respectfully disagree with much of what you said, but I'm glad you said it :-)
Posted by: Richard MacManusOK, now to address some of the other responses. And again, thank you to everybody who took the time to leave a comment - it is all appreciated and will be taken into consideration for the next stage of the design.
Dan (#20), ads are a necessary part of running a professional blog these days. Obviously it's a balancing act, but we never run offensive ads like popovers or anything distracting to the reading experience.
Johan (#27) said: "The old design was warmer and more welcoming, this one feels cold and impersonal."
RM: I'm not sure what you mean. Can you specify what was warm and welcome about the last design? Perhaps it was just the familiarity. I can tell you I've been looking at this new design for a few weeks now and it feels warm and personal to me now :-)
MikeB (#28) said: "where is the design? red colored bar across top. I'm blown. logo as said before is really really bad. sorry, this is not doing it for me, i hope it didn't take longer than 2 days to build it sure don't look like it."
RM: While I love to get feedback, comments like this frustrate me. MikeB, you completely miss the context of the whole design, there is no justification for your comments on the logo, and you were insulting to the professionals who created this. This reminds me of the comment on my diabetes post about how my doctor "was an idiot" and didn't diagnose me correctly. OK this comment is not as bad as that, but when you criticize something you have to remember that a) there is a reason and *context* for every decision that was made for this design; and b) these are professional and highly skilled designers you're talking about, and I myself have been in this blog publishing business for a number of years now. So the comment that "i hope it didn't take longer than 2 days to build it sure don't look like it" is disrespectful, ill-informed, and is overall not helpful at all.
PXLated (#30) said: "Ideacodes seems to have done some nice site redesigns for others so I presume the problem here was client intervention/meddling as RWW does not reflect their normal quality. There is nothing positive that can be said about that design -101, F grade logo. Sorry Richard."
RM: You presume do you? As with Winston, your presumptions are very wrong. And again, see what I said above re MikeB's comment. You ignored all the context and your criticisms are non-specific - and as a result they're basically devoid of any meaning.
Anne (#34) said: "I must agree with Winston's constructive criticism concerning the logo: The kerning in the logo is slightly off and the harsh contrast makes it hard on the eyes."
RM: OK, fair enough - not everyone likes the logo. But at least Anne was actually constructive in her criticism and explained *why* she doesn't like it. So thank you Anne, we will take your feedback into consideration.
fak3r (#35) asked: "Overall, looks like a great upgrade - final query; would you be releasing this theme, perhaps in a neutral colour? I can see it being really nice for anyone looking to upgrade their site."
RM: Thanks for your comments fak3r. At this stage we have no plans to release the theme (it would defeat one of the goals for me, for our site design to be unique) :-) But I'm pleased you like it.
Rylan (#37), yes print CSS is coming. Thanks for the reminder!
Steven Thomas (#40) said: "The Logo wastes a lot of space and looks like my one that my son in junior high created. (The YinYang is really trite - you gotta kill that.) I know the previous color palette was red but this seems bolder and red means stop to many of us. The formatting of the posts with image badge is really nice. I like it much more than many of the other blogs I read."
RM: I hate to focus on mainly the negative comments, but again I have to respond to this - because as with 28 & 30 this is an insulting and mostly nonsensical comment. Red means stop? Puuulease...
And no I won't "kill" the yinyang, because unlike with you the yinyang actually has meaning for me. Read/write, yin/yang?? But at least Steven you finished with some nice things to say.
Overall, it's hard not to take criticism personally - particularly after all the work that went into this re-design. But I think you will come to love this new design as much as me. Sure it is different and the red is bold. But there is a reason for both those things. And much of the critique here did not mention how clean, modern and fresh the design is.
Lastly, if you do have a critique to offer, or don't like something - it's fine to say that, as long as you give your reasons and don't insult the intelligence and skill of people who put a lot of effort into this design. To be blunt, I have no respect at all for commenters 28,30 and 40 - just as they showed no respect to the designers or myself. But I respect the comments of Winstonn (18) and Anne (34), because it was constructive (even if I don't agree with some/most of it).
Anyway, enough of me on my high horse. It is of course important to me that RWW readers like the new design, so we will take all comments into consideration - and we welcome your further (constructive) feedback.
Posted by: Richard MacManusThis comes at a right time when I am doing my own re-design and have inspired me to re-think few minute details of my site; specially the likes of
* visual separation of modules
* border grids to separate sections
And of course, remove what is not needed.
Posted by: Brajeshwar | December 18, 2007 4:41 AMIs this just me or you're still working on it? Here are the issues I faced with your MT commenting system.
* It do not remembers my login credentials
Posted by: Brajeshwar | December 18, 2007 4:46 AM* It do not remembers anything even if I login with my TypeKey credentials
* Registration says my Username exist but password retrieval do not work. I honestly don't remember registering with RRW before!
Newspapers use column format for a reason. The wide columns on read-write web are hard to read.
This design is not much different from the old classic. A change could have been a lot better.
Even GigaOm switched to the wide-column unreadable format recently. Atleast, ReadwriteWeb and GigaOm is so much better looking than the Arrington's site. When will that ever get redesigned?
Like the stuff you write, though.
Posted by: Joseph Pally | December 18, 2007 5:08 AMAlso, any idea a comment posting takes 10-15 seconds to submit on your site? (not moderation wait, but simple submission).
Posted by: Joseph Pally | December 18, 2007 5:10 AMI just saw Emily's Twitter - it looks Great!
Nice + Clean + Modern!
Congrats! ;))
Posted by: BillyWarhol | December 18, 2007 5:33 AMExcellent work. Love the new design. Good work all around.
Posted by: Neeraj | December 18, 2007 7:05 AMLooks great!
Posted by: Mich | December 18, 2007 11:39 AMThe logo is really awful. Looks like something made in Microsoft Word. There is an excessive use of red on the site that is almost hurtful to the eyes. Until you make some changes, I'll stick to RSS
Posted by: Jordan | December 18, 2007 2:12 PMNew design is great. logo is amature, unrefined.
Posted by: Justin | December 18, 2007 3:55 PMOverall, decent work. There are some major issues with the redesign, though, and I've written up a blog post with my thoughts on the whole thing - too long to post as a comment here.
http://blog.frivolousmotion.com/2007/12/readwriteweb-redesign-analysis-and.html
If you feel like clicking through, give it a look. I tried to keep it fair and constructive.
Posted by: Kevin M. Keating | December 18, 2007 6:26 PMI wanted to say that as a newcomer to web design I found it very instructive reading all these comments. Congratulations for creating a highly educational and interesting process, and for taking the trouble to respond to the criticisms offered.
Obviously your new design invokes a complex range of responses, as will any design.
Also I understand why in your comment #60 you said you had no respect for commentators #28, #30 and #40. But I do think that when you are reading through all the comments it can be interesting and at least different to see some viewpoints expressed this way.
Posted by: Paul Roberts | December 18, 2007 8:51 PMSorry but I have to say that the color combination is not the best one from the usability point of view.
I also wrote an entry in my blog about this topic:
Posted by: Alexis Brion | December 18, 2007 11:35 PMhttp://www.designvsart.com/blog/2007/12/18/bad-color-contrast-analysis-of-new-readwriteweb-design/
This is the comment I left on Kevin's blog (#70):
Kevin, thank you for taking the time and effort to do this analysis. It is very thorough and you make some very good points. Plus as you are a regular reader of RWW, your feedback is truly important to me. I'd like to respond to some of what you said though:
1) You said: "I wouldn’t be so picky if I didn’t care."
RM: Fair enough ;-)
2) You said: "...among other things, he even goes so far as to state that he doesn’t respect certain commenters - not their comments - but as people. His justification for this is that they didn’t show respect for himself or the designers, and I don’t see this at all. Two of the three commenters he singled out actually had positive things to say about the design, and I fail to recall a rule somewhere that specifies that all opinions on the subject of design have to be justified by technical know-how."
RM: I stand by what I said -- if people are disrespectful, rude *and* make non-specific criticisms, I honestly have no respect for that kind of person. Sorry if that upset you. But it's not being elitist or anything like that, it's just simple manners. And it's nothing to do with lack of technical know-how or not being a designer either, it's that they made negative, rude comments with virtually no basis at all. If you're going to give negative feedback, particularly if it is disparaging of people, then you must back it up. If you don't, and show disrespect for myself or the design team, then don't expect any respect back. I honestly don't mind if people say "I hate the design" or whatever, but I don't see how you can expect to be taken seriously when you make disparaging comments about professional people *and* make nonsensical statements at the same time (note: it's the combination of the two that gets under my skin, so it's not about lack of technical knowledge at all).
Having said that, obviously I have a great deal of respect for your critique, because you took the effort to explain things and you didn't stoop to insulting me or the people behind the design. Likewise many of the other comments, negative or positive, were fine because they represent the opinion of our readers -- and were civil.
final thoughts...
I really do appreciate your detailed feedback here. I stand by the design though and I think it is a much cleaner, more professional, bolder design than our previous one. I like the logo too, for the reasons I listed in my original post. The new design positions RWW as more of a media property and the many links you speak of are designed to give people more ways to access our content.
Having said all that, I certainly respect your right to disagree - and I'm very glad you listed out point for point *why* you feel that way. We will take it all under consideration, I can assure you of that. Thanks for doing this analysis and I hope you continue to read and enjoy RWW :-)
Posted by: Richard MacManusthe colors are not all that great
Posted by: atomic1firea shade of blue would have been much of a better choice
then red because red is a bit more of an eyesore but then some people might think your ripping off msn
It seems like e lot of commenters are jumping to conclusions. Personally, I think the redesign achieves the goals Richard wrote above. Design is entirely subjective and those of you that are quick to dismiss the logo are just slamming it to join the bandwagon. Many of you that have negative comments have pretty awful sites of your own, which I could rip apart and critique easily with the same words you've used here.
If you like clean, functional, professional and bold design, you'll love this redesign. It's easy to read and has an openness that the last design didn't have. The red is now isolated to the header and the rest of the page is clean. I like it! Don't let the negatives speak for the majority of people visitng your site.
Posted by: David | December 19, 2007 4:04 AMRichard of course ads are important for you guys but to have it be the first piece of content thrown at a user is a bit pushy in my eyes. I feel an ad should never take away from the over layout design, which it does. It would of been nicer to have your header first and then the ad just above the content.
Posted by: Dan Shields | December 20, 2007 3:38 AM#care about the new design as I only visit it to post comments.
"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
Doesn't make it better than Transitional and it will certainly contribute to the +360 validation errors. ( declare it as Strict if you really know what it is )
BTW, being a R/W Web blog, where's OpenID integration, microformats and etc? =)
Posted by: lmjabreu | December 21, 2007 7:26 PMCongrats on the new design - the year end is always a good time for a little housekeeping.
Love the nice, big MyBlogLog widget but then again I'm a little biased :-)
Ian
Posted by: Ian Kennedy | December 22, 2007 2:14 AMThe old site design was quite pleasant to the eye and benefited from a nice color combo of reds and golds. Every time I pulled the site up I thought about how much I like the colors, layout and UI. It’s deep red and soft tan gradients were simple, elegant and beautiful.
The new site just feels clunky and loose. Because the new design only uses red in the header the rest of the page seems to fall apart it’s almost impossible to tell content and branding from advertising.
The logo is shockingly immature in nature and lacks any design whatsoever. It reminds me of things I did early on when I had no ideas.
If the request of Read Write Web was that they wanted to emphasize the RWW in their name then surely there are 100 better ways to do that than by merely making the RWW big and black and the other letters small and gray.
http://www.malandarras.com/read-write-web-redesign/
Posted by: Malan D | December 23, 2007 8:04 PMNew designs take a while to get used to. I use Leopard/Safari and have a problem that the right and left margins are missing. This means I'm missing the border round the header and the text on the page is absolutely up against the left edge of the browser window with no left margin at all. This makes it look very unattractive. Don't know how to send you a screenshot.
Posted by: Roy | December 24, 2007 1:26 AMNew designs take a while to get used to. I use Leopard/Safari and have a problem that the right and left margins are missing. This means I'm missing the border round the header and the text on the page is absolutely up against the left edge of the browser window with no left margin at all. This makes it look very unattractive. Don't know how to send you a screenshot.
Posted by: Roy | December 24, 2007 1:26 AM