A List Apart 4.0: Your Honest Thoughts
Today I was going to start my Being the Hype Series, but seeing how the web’s most important design site was redesigned from the dead I figured there was no way anyone would pay attention to me. So I figured I would see if we could have a honest discussion on the new redesign and you could share your thoughts.
I am not looking for praise and I am not looking for people to bash it, but maybe we can approach it from a design point of view that is constructive. What works? What doesn’t? Did they reach their audience? Does the branding make sense?
My Thoughts
First off, for anyone wishing to announce a redesign of a site, please wait till the DNS propagates so myself and many others can type in http://alistapart.com/ instead of http://alistapart.textdrive.com/. I understand the excitement of re-launching a new site (for the fourth time?), but just a litte more patience would have been appreciated. And that’s my biggest complaint.
As for the design, I like it. Of course I always like the simple-beautiful type of designs, but I think they did a great job of this. The line-height seems to be a bit generous, but maybe that’s only on my screen. There are small details of the design that fascinate me (font choices for metadata), but you do have to wonder what took this design so long because it really isn’t overly complicated. I can only assume building a brand new CMS from the ground up had something to do with it.
With longer articles I can see there being a problem for me to read them in one viewing. All the headers are the same so there isn’t much of a break for my eyes. For example, Joe Clark’s article on PDF accessibility was impossible for me to read without taking a break after only a couple of paragraphs. I don’t know if it’s the white background or all the black text, but it’s just hard for me to do.
IA wise I am surprised to see a lack of focus on the discussions going on with the articles. There is not indication on the frontpage that any of the articles have comments and even on the article pages themselves you aren’t made aware of the fact that there are comments being written. ALA thrives on its community so I am surprised to see that it doesn’t put a much greater focus on it.
I really don’t have much else to say about it. I’m not going to gush about it because it’s a nice design, but nothing extraordinary and I won’t clown it because there really isn’t anything wrong with it. Of course it being ALA we have to throw in a little bit of hype for it and our perspective changes quite a bit.
Like it? Hate it? Meh?
I dig it. It’s got a nice corporate, professional look about it. I like the logo and the placement of it. That treatment (the logo design) reminds me of something, but I can’t for the life think of what it is.
I agree with the length of some of the articles, Clark’s in particular. I think once you get to so many words in a post, it’s better presented as a whitepaper, or at least in a format similiar to ChangeThis where the reader is presented with a summary and then directed to print or download an easier to read PDF file.
Seeing that much in a skinny column that’s eventually by itself on a browser screen after so much scrolling gets to be intimidating to the reader - I think.
By Mark on August 23, 2005 11:33 am
It’s great from a design perspective, but I feel like it’s a failure from a branding perspective.
I have a hunch that the identity brief consisted of “It’s like The Morning News meets Particletree.” This isn’t a bad thing in itself (it’s the most attractive incarnation of ALA, and definitely a beautiful site on it’s own), but it seems that the site just has no continuity of identity. It looks like they fell into the trap of picking an attractive design rather than an appropriate one.
By James Archer on August 23, 2005 12:05 pm
Honestly, I’m not blown away or anything. It’s very plain and minimalist, which is popular right now…and will probably become even more popular with ALA’s redesign.
All in all, it’s good, easy to read, yada, yada, yada. It just doesn’t blow my socks off or anything.
By Summerville on August 23, 2005 12:05 pm
James (@2) -
It’s interesting that you see this as a branding “failure.” If you study sites in any industry, they all have a similiar layout, they all look like they “belong” to that particular genre.
ALA is a site similiar in scope to Particle Tree, StyleGala and others. So how is it a brand failure that the site should mimic their layout?
By Mark on August 23, 2005 12:17 pm
Ah, alistapart.textdrive.com is much better.
I saw another blip about it this morning and was thoroughly unimpressed because it looked just like the old design. Obviously, the DNS had not propagated to my area. :)
Back to the new design — I like it. Lots of whitespace, and I don’t feel as confined as I did in the old design. It has a “book” feel to it now, which I like.
By Nicole on August 23, 2005 12:23 pm
Fixed. Width.
By Andy Hume on August 23, 2005 12:27 pm
I’m going to have to agree with everyone else, and say I am less than impressed. I mean, it’s a great look, and there is little I can take away from it. But, it’s nothing that made me fall out of my chair, no real pushing of the envelope or anything we haven’t seen before. I’m enjoying getting a lot more content in an eyeful now; it seemed inevitable that ALA go to a wider layout.
All in all, it’s definitely an improved browsing experience for me, but not a design I am going to go around telling people to check out.
By Dann Ryan on August 23, 2005 12:31 pm
I’m liking the actual article pages. I go there to learn, so that is what I care about most. They feel wider and easier to read. My criticism of those pages is the font size for pre and code blocks. Too small for me.
By Ryan Campbell on August 23, 2005 12:37 pm
Mark (#4):
I think it’s a branding failure because instead of enhancing the ALA look — they could have completely redesigned but kept some kind of visual continuity — they scrapped it and started from scratch.
A visual identity is an anchor for an experience. It’s the same reason that Charlie Brown always wore the same shirt. The ALA experience (in-depth, high-quality content) is essentially the same, but they’ve now completely changed the anchor. It’s like Charlie Brown suddenly changing into a black turtleneck for no real reason.
I never much cared for their last design, but I don’t think that this kind of radical reinterpretation of the ALA brand was necessary, given the lack of a comparable change in other aspects of the appearance.
It’s always neat to see a cool new design, and I think JSM did a great job with it — but from a business perspective (something with which I have a bit of experience) it seems like a flop.
By James Archer on August 23, 2005 12:40 pm
James(@9) -
I see what you’re saying, but I respectfully disagree. The ALA brand, as has been noted in posts all over the hyposphere, was on the verge of dying anyway because of the lack of updates and outdated design. Sometimes organizations need such a radical change such as this to revive and invigorate a brand. The new design, while not blogbustingly exciting (as noted by a few here) is now relevant to the genre of magazine type blogs and fresh.
It’s a kick in the brand pants that ALA needed. As far as Charlie Brown’s shirt, I think you’re assigning too much importance to the previous ALA design. I see Zeldman being more of the shirt, not the design.
By Mark on August 23, 2005 12:58 pm
James: Up, just like Mark said above. Also, I think it’s important to note, ALA never had a consistent and cohesive graphic brand. They had a logo and semi-vanilla layout. This was one of the things we sought to fix. In terms of real branding, user exposure and perception, I actually think we went in a very direct and clear direction. We have a logo (and logo system with An Event Apart, and A Book Apart soon) that compliments what I believe ALA to be: scholarly, clear, and professional. What I am saying is, ALA needed a graphic brand that supported it’s overall brand. I feel like this was a problem we corrected, not complicated. Does that make sense?
(Good discussion here guys! Constructive criticism is always welcome)
By Jason Santa Maria on August 23, 2005 1:06 pm
My first reaction to the front page was that there was nothing to guide my eyes. Everything — except for the issue blurb and the TextDrive ad (whenever that shows) — is so toned down that it all blends together and I can’t focus on a single thing.
The headings are wrong for two reasons: They’re centered, so they’re hard to read by default, and they’re too loosely tracked, making them even harder to read. With just one of the two, it might be okay. In my mind, they’ve used loose tracking way too much throughout the site.
And stylistically, it draws inspiration from old printed books, which I don’t think is even remotely appropriate for their content.
It’s not that I don’t like the way it looks, it’s just that it doesn’t work.
By Travholt on August 23, 2005 1:16 pm
As has been mentioned in the announcement article by Zeldman, the new branding allows for greater extension into other avenues like books. The old ala logo, which always looked like it was giving me the finger, just isn’t as flexible.
I feel they’ve accomplished their goal in creating a flexible brand and one that should carry them well over the next couple years. Obviously, it’s starting from scratch but they’re not Coca Cola… I don’t think they’ll suffer.
Scrivs, I agree on the whole comments issue. The comments are almost a site unto their own and only the truly committed will venture in. It’s certainly not as inviting as a comments form on the page or an indication of how many comments have been made. I also feel that 10 comments per page requires a lot of paging on heavily commented posts.
From a font perspective, bumping it up a size or two certainly made it easier to read (same goes for Whitespace, btw!).
All-in-all, I like the new look. Hopefully this will be the return of a more regular ala. In the meantime, I’ll go read me some Particletree. :)
By Jonathan Snook on August 23, 2005 1:26 pm
I’ll agree, the line height is a bit generous. I am also suprised at the tenous (at best) link from articles to discussions. While it is nice for the discussions to have their own page, there does need to be a stronger link in the design between the article and the discussion.
By JohnO on August 23, 2005 2:01 pm
Overall I like it.
Couple of things do seem to be cropping up, and maybe it’s the zeal to get the new design out, but I would expect a functioning print style sheet. Joe Clark’s article (interesting but long with that line-spacing) only prints out three pages then drifts to the right leaving nothing but blank pages in Firefox. Caused one version of IE to crash and others cropped most of the content.
Another thing (mentioned already) is the color. It does seem rather blah. I keep expecting a spalsh of color somewhere, but no.
I think the main thing I will always go to ALA for is the content and that seems just as informative and discussion worthy as always.
No five stars, but definately not a dud either
By David Mead on August 23, 2005 2:41 pm
My initial response would be that it’s going to be blown out of proportion regardless based on the fact that it is ALA.
That being said they earned it so hats off for that.
Now that that’s out of the way my thoughts on the design would be I like it, I like the clean minimal look, however I think the mainpage is possibly using 1 column too many.
Just an opinion but it seems to me like the logo taking the entire left column in a bit much, then again that could be intentional due to re-branding, if so it’s actually quite smart :)
After a quick run through of the site the main things that stood out:
The size of the ’search’ box on the mainpage, seems a little small.
The contact button, for some unknown and probably stupid reason I am used to always finding it on the far right verses in the middle / towards the end of the navigation. You would have to be a complete idiot not to be able to find it mind you but it’s just an observation.
I love the fonts, but I can’t help but wonder what the titles would look like in that rustic colour you are using. It seems the dark colours are blending a little too much for my liking, again just an opinion. I prefer titles to have a little punch.
All that being said the site is great, and with such a ridiculously talented group behind it we would be crazy to say it was anything less than than.
Good job I look forward to watching it progress.
By Shane Perran on August 23, 2005 3:12 pm
Very Clean and consistent. With the more scholarly look & feel, I think they’ve gone a long way to help brand the site, and make future endeavors more easily identifiable as their work.
Regardless of how it looks, I’d probably still visit the site and read the articles and comments. Its good stuff!
By Kyle Posey on August 23, 2005 3:42 pm
I think the design is beautiful in it’s simplicity and professionalism. Bravo, Jason + crew.
-PS Really dig the new logo and the issue num. The footer really holds everything together well.
By Chopper on August 23, 2005 3:43 pm
Kevin Cornell’s little illustrations are wonderful. Other than that it is a solid re-design.
Agree on the domain propogation problem though. I found out about the redesign through one (or make that ALL of them) of the CSS design sites and they linked to alistapart.com as it worked for them. Didn’t work down here in Africa yet though. Finally found the textdrive link through some obscure blog.
By Paul Watson on August 23, 2005 4:00 pm
I have to say one of the first things I noticed was the lack of feedback on feedback. I love reading comments almost as much as the articles, and the new format, had me searching for the comments (I thrice overlooked the ‘Discuss’ section: once because of it’s placement after ‘Learn More’; once because I thought it meant forums instead of comments (I’m not a fan of forums); then finally, just because it provided no feedback, if the article was actually being discussed. No 5 comments, 10 comments, or ‘be the first to comment’. Just a follow this link and even after following the link, I had to scroll down to the bottom of the page to see how many comments. Maybe I’m spoiled, but I do like to know before I start reading if I’m reading 4 or 34 comments. Because if 34, I might start skimming.
So on one hand, I dislike a lot of little things, besides how comments/community is handled, but also enjoy a lot of the little touches. While the front page titles just start to blend for me, I do love the rollover effect, where the underline only accents the edges and extensions.
By allgood2 on August 23, 2005 5:53 pm
I thought it was interesting to look at, although generally I hate sites that don’t scale to 800px wide, as even though I have a widescreen display I don’t usually want to read back and forth over 17″ columns and really tiny text.
If you scale the text beyond one mouse wheel click (125%?) in Firefox the design breaks. And the colums are WAY too wide to be readable. I got a headache after two paragraphs and cut and pasted the text into a text editor to read the article so I could set my own width.
Fixed width at 1024×768 still makes a horizontal scroll bar.
At least a site like ALA can get away with foisting a Beta on the public, since they can be certain that designers will talk about it.
But until they fix the width issues I guess I’ll have to avoid reading ALA. Too bad.
By Jough Dempsey on August 23, 2005 6:17 pm
Jough-
While it’s not exactly apparent to the beginner user, Firefox allows you to remove the styles, leaving plain, black text. Move your mouse up to the View menu and click it, move it down to the word “Styles” (don’t let go yet, there’s another menu…) then let off the button on the word “None.”
As for 17″ columns, I dont find them that much wider than the two paragraphs that gave me a headache.
By RJ Hampden on August 23, 2005 7:10 pm
Nice constructive comments on here, much better than the flame wars seen on some sites! (perhaps not about this design in particular).
Personally I like it. I’ll agree with some who say it’s not ground-breaking or anything. No it doesn’t contain the latest AJAX goodness, and wouldn’t be put in the web 2.0 category, but this itself I feel is a good thing.
I’ve spent the last year getting to know web standards. One of the first sites every more experienced designer out there pointed me to was alist apart, and I’m bloody glad it existed (even in it’s previous incarnation).
For me this site falls under the category of ‘classic’. Smooth lines, looks good, and very reliable. I am a little confused why they don’t cater for 800*600, but I suppose given their target audience, and in these more modern times, chances are people running that res are few and far between.
On the design itself, well I like it! It reinforces my personal ‘classic’ branding of the site, and it’s easy on the eye. I applaud them for not diving down the seen-too-often blog route, and for producing an original (OK 3-col with their own touches) design. I had no problem bumping up the text-size 150% in FF without it breaking, and it still looked pretty sweet to me.
As for typography I’m definitely no expert, but it seems we can all learn a thing or two from JSM and particle tree here! The custom RSS feeds for each article are a definite positive adition as well (perhaps they were inspired by Inmans customisable RSS feed gig). Much of the learning goes on here, so useful to stay in the loop.
I’d also be interested to know if they plan on releasing their ruby on rails CMS as open source or not… a new textpattern in the making?
Finally, I do like those illustrations featured on the latest articles! Very design-in-flight, and one more thing that makes this site such a special corner of our standards world.
P.S. Can’t you get textile on here or something so save manual formatting of posts (sorry, I’m just a tad lazy!)
By Andy Beeching on August 23, 2005 7:12 pm
I really like the majority of the design, but I can’t understand why they wouldn’t make it liquid - or at least provide an option to do so. The length of the articles is perfect for a liquid layout, and the fact that it is static makes it really annoying to read on my Powerbook display (the window basically has to take up the entirety of the screen to not display a horizontal scrollbar).
It does look pretty nice though.
By Jake Tracey on August 23, 2005 8:02 pm
I like the subject titles. with the underline. I think thats unanimous. I like the logo. Rather than just a plain old hover its something a bit more.
Its clean, it delivers the information and its still got a bit of ‘the old ALA’ that makes it recognizable.
By Zach Inglis on August 23, 2005 11:43 pm
No !&!& drop shadows! Staff illustrator. Nice type. Enough character in the minor details to not be minimalist, clinical and sterile.
Good work, I can’t fault any choices, but haven’t really immersed myself in the UX yet - i prefer fixed widths.
By monkey dancing shadow on August 24, 2005 4:58 am
I posted this on Jason Santa Maria’s site:
First, I want to say congratulations to all involved - I believe this is a significant improvement over what you had before. It’s subtle - and I believe that’s it’s power. Many of us (me included) try to knock people upside the head with our designs. I think you’ve proven that subtlety is just as viable.
I do want to address something that I haven’t seen others mention - centered headlines in the main article column. Coming from a newspaper background, that feels unsettling to me. Yes, I know this isn’t a newspaper, but those are still effectively headlines. Some commented that they weren’t sure if you were going for a centered page layout or not. I think the centered headlines in the main content area feel odd vs. the flush-left headlines in the other content areas. Perhaps making them all flush-left could alleviate some of the visual confusion some have. I want to emphasize that I don’t there’s a right or wrong here - this is just my preference.
I also think the leading is a bit too generous, but again, that’s just preference.
All in all, I think this is really well done. You’ve certainly set the bar higher for all of us.
By Dale Cruse on August 24, 2005 9:35 am
Speaking of design… which Yahoo! Store template are you using for this site?
I have a client who sells spatulas at volume discount who thinks the design here at Whitespace is “totally rad”.
By Greg on August 24, 2005 12:11 pm
my first impression was -oh, another very nice blog-
it really has the professional polish but if someone calls it the mother of all design sites it falls short of my expectations. colors look too pale and i’m not sure about that serif, italic, bold mixture. it’s a bit too much of all.
By thomas marban on August 24, 2005 12:57 pm
Greg: It’s the original one.
By Scrivs on August 24, 2005 1:01 pm
Not a very suitable design for the format of what ALA is. An online “magazine”.
By GaBuBu on August 24, 2005 1:05 pm
I think it’s great… near perfection design-wise, imo.
I’m getting really tired of the ‘2005 blog-site design’ and was pleasantly surprised to see ALA step away.
By somuee on August 25, 2005 12:35 pm
“While it’s not exactly apparent to the beginner user, Firefox allows you to remove the styles, leaving plain, black text.”
I’m aware of Firefox’s features, and indeed use a custom stylesheet for a number of sites (this one too, as the default sheet is too wide and the font size too small to be readable… for me).
My point was that since we’re discussing ALA’s new design, we should discuss THEIR design and not OUR design in doing extra work just to read that one site by making a custom stylesheet, or eliminating their styles altogether and squeezing the width of our browser windows to make the site more readable.
“As for 17″ columns, I dont find them that much wider than the two paragraphs that gave me a headache.”
Yes, both ALA and Whitespace have text columns that are too wide to be comfortably readable. But this post wasn’t about Whitespace’s inadequacies. We’re discussing ALA. So what’s your point?
By Jough Dempsey on August 25, 2005 1:22 pm
I did like the classic style, ironic that in someway this kind of designs are refreshing…
By Gustavo on August 26, 2005 6:43 pm
How do you view the comments on articles where the discussion is closed?
Am I being thick?
By George on September 2, 2005 10:07 am
I am far from impressed with it.
It seems so unbalanced to me. I still think the “pro’s” could of did better.
Yes the reading is nice and easy on the eyes but a little bit of eye candy won’t hurt (least of my dislikes, anyhow).
Anyone can make a design with green, black, grey, and brown. It should only take about an hour to have a whitespaced, unbalanced web site and proper font choices and brand it “a great read”. When I am navigating from article to article that left logo just annoys the hell out of me and I don’t know why, it just sits there looking at me! It all just seems a bit too ammature to me. Font size is small and color seems to be to light and ‘faded’ on a laptop with 1024×768 resolution. (Yes, i am running on a full battery :)
it’s still nice but I think it could be better in a lot of ways. Especially for these guys :(
By Trevor on September 12, 2005 9:09 pm
You have that personals touch the site is very refreshing and clean looking the design is excellent all around in my opinion.
By personals on February 4, 2006 4:03 am