A Redesign is a Comin’
September 4th, 2008UPDATE
I just flipped the switch and moved everything over so it should all be done. Let me know if you find anything that looks weird, especially those of you on a PC. Enjoy.
Yup… again. I’m starting to grow out of this current design. I need something more flexible with more real estate for the posts and for side widgets. Better typography and usability as well.
You’ll notice that I’ve also begun to prepare the most recent posts to work with the new design. I’m setting some visual standards. A slight change in how I write out the headlines. Previously I use to capitalize all the words in a title including “a”, “the”, “of”, “is”, “on” and so on. Now I’m using a form of Title Casing where the first and last words in the title are capitalized as well as any word four or more letters. I’m also setting an image height of 700px for consistency. You’ll see what I mean when I launch the new design.
It’s pretty much done, I’m just making some final tweaks and I’ll probably flip the switch tomorrow evening. I hope you guys dig it.
Joey
Such a tease…
Looking forward to it, though.
Dan
Very sneaky giving us a little preview just to entice us. Well, it worked for me!
Glenn
Man, can’t wait! Come on Antonio let’s see it
Kara
I’m looking forward to seeing it!!
Nikolay
Looking good from the tiny thingy there!
Good luck with the change Antonio.
David SI
It’s nice to have friends in high places
Whatever that means…
johno
Looking forward to the redesign. Any chance of a private viewing?
josh
can’t wait to see it. Oddly enough i had a bit of insomnia last night and went back through your posts for as long long time, i think i maxed out at 95 pages or so before i needed to sleep or pass out, one of the 2.
Noticed the posts as it progressed when you would mention a new design, but mind it kind of erie how it mentions change, but since it changes your entire blog, just a weird observation. along with a sleepy ramble.
but back to the point, i’m sure it’ll look great look forward to the switch flipping. i’ve been trying to start my own blog on things that visual interest me but am having a lot of trouble coming up with a name i want grow out of too fast.
Sarah France
tease — very exciting — can’t wait
Will there be some promotional badges soon? I would love to buy one with the logo printed on…
Antonio
Sarah, do you mean a pin?
d.
Hi Antonio, I luuuuv your blog. i’ve been checking out Marber, Wordpress, etc, and I still wonder how you do it. Any handy tutorials you may know?
Sarah France
Hello Antonio — yeh a pin/button badge?
I’d be interested for sure.
Kaitlin
I’m all a-twitter with anticipation.
Jonathan Haggard
Any thoughts to give the old theme up for others to use?
josh
looks good, excited as well to see how it fills up as you ad more, if it’s always 2 up at a time and then they shift down and over as they go or how it will works. Definitely like the bigger images, and the wider design since i run a huge resolution it’s nice to take up some more of that space.
Gets me in the mood to work on mine if i can just get the name of it
michael
hey nice job!
Antonio
Damn you guys are quick! I’m porting over all the widgets and plugins so bare with me for a few minutes. Also surf around and see if you find anything out of wack. I already see that the comments look funky. I’ll fix that. You’ll notice a little button at the top right labels Open Navigation. Check that out.
David SI
Antonio nice to see it in action. Well done mate
Are you thinking of integrating a drop-down / accordion for the links at the bottom?
Antonio
David, thanks. No I’m going to keep it opened.
Joey
Lookin’ good, Antonio! Though I have to say the extra letter spacing in the menu is kind of irritating.
Antonio
Joey thanks. The letterspacing on the nav is set to .1em which is not much at all. I spaced them out a tiny bit just to make it more legible.
Angelo
I’m not a big fan of the huge numbers to the right and the long list of links below, but except for those two annoyances, it’s a terrific clean design
Bebsy
Your site has been a grower with me initially not too sure but then after a week or so it becomes like a comforatbel pair of slippers.
Nicola
Sorry Antonio, i prefer the old one.
Antonio
@Angelo
I had the same issue so I’ve made adjustments to both.
@Bebsy
Glad you enjoy the site and thanks for reading.
@Nicola
No problem. We all have our likes and dislikes. I hope it doesn’t keep you from visiting the site.
Mo.
I came to get inspired as usually and saw that the interface changed. I was pretty excited as it looks great. Love the drop down menu. But when I started my researched I couldn’t figure out how to find the pieces i loved. Too many things happening. don’t know where to look. I’ll have to go somewhere else until I figure it out. Sorry. Thought you should know…
Antonio
Mo thanks. All the content is all there, nothing is missing. You can easily use the search tool or find articles through the archive, categories and tags. What exactly are you looking for?
Mo.
I’m looking for some of the card design you had. Such as Substance. I’m starting to figure it out a bit but I liked the fact the you could some several design at once. It would enable one to compare things. I have to say though the layout is beautiful. I might just need more time to get used to it. Perhaps less scrolling?
Nicola
I’ll keep visiting this site Antonio, contents are unbelievable!
Glenn
Great job Antonio! Looks like I’m going to have to crank things up a notch at FFF. Everyone’s bringing out a reskin at the moment. Looking forward to seeing Emil’s attempt at TypeNeu!
Well done mate.
Angelo
Looks like even Grafikcache is getting an update
Bob
Hey Antonio,
Good stuff!
Seems like everyone is re-designing!
Bob
James
really nice. it’s good to keep things fresh. thanks for taking the time.
Ryan
hmm, I think I may prefer the previous design to this… will have a better look about…
Antonio
Thanks everyone.
MP
The new layout is starting to grow on me. I really dig the drop down navigation bar on your home page. Any chance of you adding a colophon, like on your old version? It was a nice touch, and a good resource.
–MP
Antonio
MP, the colophon is in the drop down.
MP
Brilliant! So I went over to view the Hemingway Template, I have to say I think you’re putting the layout to better use than the download site.
Good form.
–MP
Simon SC
Re-design looks excellent! Well done. Love the use of whitespace and greys mixed with slab-like black. You clearly know quite a bit about good, swiss design
Matthew
Nice design elements, but I’m not sure about the hierarchy. Having two posts side-by-side with equal weight is a departure from what we see on the web, and it’s a bit disorienting.
I also don’t understand the two separate navigation sections (top and bottom).
Great typography, although I think that the big numbers to the right of comments are unnecessary and distracting.
Thanks for creating such a wonderful resource, by the way.
James
everyones a critic! lets face it’s way better, in look and content than most design blogs, no need to pick holes in the details.
Aaron
Antonio, the new design is definitely neater. I just wish you had a “next” and “previous” button back on. Makes browsing so much easier than going through the archives section
Antonio
Aaron, there is a next and previous but it’s on the single post page, not the homepage. You’ll find it to the left of the article under About This Entry. I’m trying to figure out how to get it on the homepage as well.
Daniel Pipitone
I like it very much.
Alexey
Thanks, redesign very well, but I lacked “next” and “previous” navigation on the homepage. And links are not visible. Maybe another color or bold.
sr
dislike it, it was better when you could see more than 2 posts at a time before.. and there are menus all over the place, still cant digest this..