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201011 Mar
Posted in Site Updates
The announcement of our redesign last month received an overwhelming number of comments, with the majority expressing negative feedback. The main concerns raised were that the new design was too dark, lifeless / boring and lacking in fun, spirit and character.
As previously stated, the main reason for the redesign was from a functional perspective to allow us to expand the site and take it forward. The reason that the old design was removed, and not simply recoded to make the functional changes required, was in fact due to a number of negative comments I had received about the previous design since taking over the site in July 2009, however following the large number of comments received over the last three weeks in support of the previous design, it is now apparent that these negative comments were not representative of the views of the majority of our readers. With this in mind I have made the decision to temporarily reinstate the old design whilst considering the best way to move forward with the site.
Have Your Say
Taking into account the feedback received from you the readers, I believe there are two options to take the site foward:
1) To recode the current theme, keeping the overall look and feel of the site, but making the necessary functional changes.
2) To hold a design competition, allowing you the readers to submit potential new designs for the site, as suggested by a number of comments.
Please let me know your comments / thoughts on the subject below.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
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Comments
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01.
I’d very much welcome a design competition! That’d be fun to do :) Though I do like this old(er) design better than the black one. When I saw the black and grey dark design I was very shocked!
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02.
My vote: keep this look and feel, but update it to include new functionality and of course as much css3 as possible ;-)
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03.
I’m for keeping this one’s look and feel. I love the playfulness of it.
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04.
I think you should just change the current design. Why go all out and change your branding when you have something people are so familiar with?
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05.
When I first found this site, I was captivated by the bold, clean colour and simplicity. The theme is a masterpiece.
You could even change the basic structure of the site, while keeping the colourful header graphic and the colour-scheme. Those are the most important bits, in my eyes.
I was pleasantly surprised to find this beauty where I expected that ugly, dark, blog-looking thing.
(And that’s a thing, too: this theme doesn’t feel like a blog; but rather like a CSS3 home with some recent news on the front page.) -
06.
Option 1)
CSS3 can be fun, but it can be a dry subject. Having a fun and charming looking site helps get over that. -
07.
Option #1:
Please stick with the old design: It’s colorful, friendly, simple, and timeless, and has become part of your identity, as someone else already pointed out. CSS3 is supposed to make our lives as designers/developers easier and our websites more beautiful. The “new” design with its dull colours and office-style typo (especially those huge, ugly Arial headlines) rather had a feel of C++ ;-))Maybe you could increase lineheights to 150% to allow for more breathing space and increase legibility.
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08.
Why don’t you hold a competition, and have the users vote between designs. You can include the current design in it as well. I am sure that most of us will be willing to create something, even if there is no prize involved, as long as we get recognition.
I am not the best designer, but i can recreate the current design, with no images (just some SVG) -
09.
This current design is good, there’s nothing wrong with it. You can combine functional requirements to design, that’s no biggie. Modify the code as you go along.
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10.
a design competition would be good to bounce off some ideas, i like the site as it is but some ideas from a competition could be added, this could please more people.
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11.
This design is bright and happy. I think it would be great if it stayed that way even if you did away with some of the motifs.
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pingin says:Comment » May 3rd, 2010 at 12:38 am
This is probably all water under the bridge now, but I vote for (1) too. I remember reading the negative comments after the first redesign — I felt quite sorry for whoever had done it. You have an original and memorable design — keep it. Just evolve and tweak it as you go along.
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13.
Recode it. Just, please keep it! It a great design. Not need to change it, really!
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Rune Jensen says:Comment » May 6th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
I feel like citating Jacob Nielsen, who says “Typically, a fresh design will be a worse design simply because it’s new and thus breaks user expectations. A better strategy is to play up familiarity and build on users’ existing knowledge of how a system works. ”
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/familiar-design.html
Read and learn.
And another generel rule:
“Don’t fix, what is not broken!”
You know w3c.org had had a new design and I hated it from the beginning. Its desorganized, and impossible to find anything. And the reason is, I am used to the old design. Why do I have to learn a new navigation, just because W3C got tired of looking at it?
My conclusion: Do not change the design on this page. Add new content instead. What happened to the idea of a CSS3 gallery? I think it’s a nice idea. Something like CSS-Zen Garden, but with CSS3 instead. I could use it to promote CSS3 myself in the forums I write.
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Shayne says:Comment » June 29th, 2010 at 9:17 pm
Thanks for switching back to your more lofty, fun feel.
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16.
#6 win: If it aint broken, it aint needing fixes.
The site looks fine like it is now.
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17.
Recode it. Just, please keep it! It a great design. Not need to change it, really!
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18.
Great, I hope they will implement it faster and as it goes, I hope IE will adopt it conform with the rules!
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19.
me too: I’m for 1). This design is much cooler than the newer bland one.
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20.
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27.
Great post!!!This project is wonderful and very good. I think it’s great if it look like if it takes a slight change
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28.
wonderful article with some great and informative comments.
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29.
i’m for recoding this one. it’s a great look, why mess with it?
glad to see it’s back for the meantime!
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31.
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32.
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35.
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