Redesign

Dan writes:

I meant to reply to this sooner. So you fixed the alignment issue then. The redesign – it’s nice, sharp, but to be honest I find it a bit heavy with the grey. The 3D effect is reminiscent of the blocky animated logo on the Warp site. Sorry to be a bit negative. What’s your thinking on it?

You’re the second negative reaction (out of two! Sarah was the other one, damn her…) – oh well, that’s user testing for you. Regarding the design itself I wanted something that reversed the usual conventions (the title is almost invisible, the righthand menu is more noticeable than the posts which should next most noticeable after the title, etc). The result is blunt, 3d and slightly daft – in response to my probably mistaken impression that most CSS layouts seem to be a bit too polite, fiddly and flat (if they do go in for 3d it’s usually with little drop shadows round the main text block. It’s an act of perversity. I hang my head in shame. Having said that I haven’t checked it out on PC which is usually darker of course. I’ll make the background to the text column a lighter grey. Rather than the Warp site – which I like, but find pretty frustrating in terms of usability, a common mistake for print designers when designing websites – I was thinking of the interior of Tate Modern. Not sure why though!