Good Morning, Gothamist Redesign

Touche.

But let's keep the comments here related to the redesign, please.

And one more thing to keep in mind, some old posts may look funky in the new two-column site. We're trying to make adjustments, but that might not be possible. So, to clarify, we'd appreciate feedback on design/user interface issues we can act on.

Thanks, Bill. As you can tell, I do not use Macs.

i feel like i have to tilt my head to read it now. that's odd.

In Firefox 2.0 in Windows there is a scroll bar at the bottom of the page at 1024x768 with the browser maximized. This is terribly annoying and terrible unprofessional.

This also occurs at the same resolution with IE7 (Windows XP). There are also multiple JavaScript and CSS errors on the new page (have your developer check out the Error Console in Firefox).

Looks very Gawkerish. But good. I was just thinking the other day -- "I wonder if they'll redesign the site soon?". Weird.

One comment, though -- I'd think about reducing the size of your logo or at least moving it over to left:10px, because right now part of it is on top of the adsense banner.

reading the site using firefox on a mac and the line length is entirely too long. my eyes get tired half way through reading a single line. just because you expand the layout to 1024 pixels wide doesn not mean that you need to use most of it for text.

also it annoys me that i now have to scroll down to see the gothamist labs features. i must say that draws me in more than the stories lately.

2 cents.

7: Not sure where you are getting blue from, what is your monitor resolution set to, things should be gray and not in the websafe space.

8: I tested this on IE 6 and Firefox PC, but I will again check these pages. I do see the horizontal bar issue you are talking abut and will work to fix that today

10: It's not sitting on the adsense banner for us over here. Can you give us more feedback on your browser setup so we can properly troubleshoot?

12: If you are on Firefox or Safari, you should be able to make the width of your page smaller and the content column will reflow to fit the page. It's not working in IE right now, the column will remain fixed, but we are working on it.

looks very nice, but after refreshing, still getting a funky error at the top (mixing of the gothamist logo with the chicagoist logo). also, i posted something in the forums last night around 8 pm and it was up for hours, but now appears to be gone...

hmm... the code is suffering a bit from "class-itis" and base.css is a bit heavy in the amount of code. For this simple of a design, it could be tightened up greatly. Good effort though. I'd see if your weather vendor has a feed that in table output.

i don't like it, looks kinda corporate sleek, rest in peace ol' gothamist

this new one seems kind of sterile and boring compared to the old one.

I like it, my only complaint is the ALL CAPS POSTED BY: WHOEVER ON OCTOBER 30, 2006.

go back to the old design and get a proofreader. seriously though; i'm not just trying to heckle.

im all for change but sometimes change isn't so good. i like the ol' gothamist. and i hate the arial type. i also agree w/ #6, i feel like i have to tilt instead of reading centered.

What has happend here? Can you go back? that's it, I will awake on Tuesday to the Gothamist that I know.

I'm not a fan of the re-design. It requires me to scroll left to right as well as up and down.

thanks for the comment, neil. i can resize my window and the line length shrinks but i am left with a scroll bar and some blank columnal space on the right. i'm not sure that is what is meant by relative sizing. a fixed width layout and relative sized elements within it simply makes no sense.

D'oh! These are probably not valid design critiques, but I mostly read Gothamist at work and to be discreet I keep the window small- so this scrolling to the left is really a drag. Also the pictures are HUGE, which I don't feel adds much to the experience. Make the articles look less important too (or shorter). Anyway, my 2 cents. :(

I miss the old design, too. Why fix what isn't broken? Maybe this one will grow on me.....

I also really dislike the arial font because it makes it look less professional and more generic personal-blog-esque.

And having to scroll side to side is annoying. I liked the shorter column length of the old site.

But redesign is good sometimes, and if this is how it's going to be, I guess I'll live.

I definitely agree that this is a step backward. Gothamist was perfectly fine before. This design looks like some simple default template in Frontpage.

miss the old layout, felt more newspaperish to me. Takes some getting used too ( yep! I guess I'm a pureist.)

I have to say that I'm in the "I liked the old layout better" camp.

First, Arial is bad.

Second, the articles no longer feel like self-contained stories. The overly-long lines (big problem) trail off into dead white space on the right, and the weak <hr /> tags make for a weak top and bottom boundary. The extra-large images only make this worse, by pushing the text into a secondary role.

Third, regarding the new logo format. (The old was initially cached and overrunning the ad header in my browser as well. Plus, isn't it a little odd to run a Chicagoist ad in what could very well pass for the title space on Gothamist?) The skyline loses something of its subtlety in the new square block format. I'm dead-set against it, but for the moment, I think its too clunky. Which also goes for the all-caps taglines.

This font is very hard on the eyes. Your previous font at least had semi-serifs that one's eyes could latch on to. I feel like I'm squintintg trying to read your articles now.

I don't like the redesign. The add for Chicagoist at the top looks like the headline for this site -- I thought I logged onto the wrong site and actually went to a different site last night after going to Gothamist b/c I thought the site was messed up.

hey jen.. i'm digging it. The line length is a little long, but I think all you really need is a border on the right side or something.. something to add a little finality to each line.. or each post in a different shade of grey. You guys do good work... keep it up.

http://web2.0validator.com/

to funny..

I for one like it, including (shockingly) the use of Arial. Based on my involvement with other sites that have undergone redesigns, keep in mind people are generally resistant to change. ;-) Great work, and I'm looking forward to how it looks as you tweak it over the next few days/weeks.

I do agree with #53, though; the right side of the posts/comments columns feels like it's floating off into space. Some subtle hinting there may be useful, e.g., change the shading of the post/comment boxes so that there's a good contrast against the background).

Seriously, the ad at the top looks like the page banner, and I thought I went to Chicagoist by mistake.

Not a rant - hopefully to be taken as constructive feedback:
1. Ditto on the "is this chicagoist" comment. Exactly my first reaction.
2. Arial (black) on grey (which appears to default to 10pt) is harder to read than the previous white on black.
3. Layout is not cleaner, on the other hand: pictures of varying sizes strewn on the page make it look vastly more unkempt.
4. Not a fan of having to scroll right and left.
5. The misspellings I have come to love. It's part of your brand. But this supposedly "slicker" look and feel is somehow not Gothamist. It's very half-baked, and very off-putting.

I kinda hate it.

the site was already pretty clean; this is fine as far as sleekness is concerned.

the nice thing about the white background breakdowns for content in the layout before was that they helped the readability. using alternating colors in the background, like this page does for each different thread, for example, would be a pretty easy change to make and organize the articles better. the headlines also looked clearer as a result of the difference in background colors.

however, so long as gothamist doesn't go pink or became foofy, i think i can adapt.

I don't think enough has been said about the clumsiness of the redesigned gothamist logo in the top left corner. As a single line a la the chicagoist logo conveniently loated front-and-center, the skyline looks more like in-line symbols or wingdings, sort of subtle. The buildings on top of the letters are so much more substantial than the word, it adds a monolithic, designed-by-frankenstein feel to the logo. "FRANKENSTEIN LIKE BUILDINGS! FRANKENSTEIN ABHOR SUBTLETY!!"

this IS super hard to read. arial + grey colors is like a droning noise. maybe i'll read sf-ist. it's softer on the eyes.
maybe you can have two versions, like newgothamist.com or oldgothamist.com. almost the way they have different magazine covers in different markets...

Comments look better since this morning - you pushed the right margin in which does make a world of difference.

Still, I hate Arial. I must stare at this god-awful font all day long and to have it bearing down on me in leisure moments will probably prove too much to bear in time. Please consider an alternative font.

It's not just I hate it...I cant even look at it. Why the change? Put the old back up.

One more comment: I agree with the poster that said he felt like he had to squint to read posts now. It is either that the font is smaller or maybe just the lack of sophisication of Arial that makes this happen, I'm not sure. Consider a different font, maybe one designed for your use only.

Boring boring boring. "Cleaner" isn't necessarily better. Preferred the old format.

PLEASE move text to the left! Just too weird...

a few slightly constructive thoughts:
• the classic logo where the buildings flowed into the name was perfect.

• you need to think really hard about your font choices for many of the reasons listed above.

• the gothamist contribute features are a major draw for me to come to the site instead of using a feed and i don't think i'm alone. i know you've moved it around the page a lot, but i really prefer it to be above the fold. and readable. you've put the "recommended/commented" bit on the top for my convenience i assume, but it is so small i'm loathe to read it. i'm not even twenty-five and you crazy kids are making me feel like an old man. why couldn't you put the contribute info on the (restored) right column and still have the center column expand and contract with the width of the page? if there was a right column worth my time, i might make my window wide enough to find it.

• an oldie but a goodie: while your new maps feature is cool, the link to it takes up a lot of space and is kind of garish. i gather it can't be a live map, but you could at least include the most recent event added to the map somewhere, no?

• i miss the grey background.

• i find the photo stuff pretty jarring now. half of your photos are still at the old size (in fact all of the "wide" images on the first page right now max out at "500 px," meanwhile some of the new photos are so big they require a scroll bar within the post. and two horizontal scroll bars on a page is cruel punishment for those of us with small screens (or peeking at work). there must be something more graceful.

• another long-standing issue: this may just be a html thing, but can you figure out a way to have the blockquote "line" go around images? gothamist seems to love blockquotes, you should be nicer to them.

• Maybe next time you could put a staging area public before you make the switch? a lot of these criticisms could have been dealt with with much less pain.

i understand your old layout was getting rickety, but at least it was distinct. this one... not so much. why have you guys decided to jump onto such a pedestrian bandwagon?

i think there is a general consensus that this really isn't a step forward. so please don't pull the standard gothamist "its jsut one misteak, we all have real jobs, so you have to live with it" line on this one? this is the web, nothing is static and an ugly site is harder to forgive than a typo filled one. and there is precedence in backtracking on redesigns (salon.com, way back when, for one). nothing to be ashamed of in admiting your mistakes.

jen/jake: your readers really like you guys, typos and all, we just don't like your new look. as a favor to us, your legions of loyal readers, maybe you could go back to the old design and try again?

i prefer the original. not that big a deal. if you do keep this format change you really should consider making the fonts larger. some things are really way to small: most commented is quite hard to read. i scrolled through the comments without reading them, so this might be redundant (if it is, then it's probably not a great sign), but i don't really like the font at all. it reminds me of a word document somehow. if you keep it like this, i'll probably get used to it though.

Relax, It's a blog people! It looks fine.

I wasn't going to comment, since so many have already said it, but after reading gothamist with new layout for a couple of days, I thought it was worth it. (Plus, maybe there's power in numbers...)

The new layout just doesn't work for this site. The wide column and smaller font make it a lot harder to read. At first I thought I was looking at the "ill" gothamist, but it seems like this is what we're getting.

I say revert to the old design if possible, it's easier to read and much cleaner for this type of news blog. If reverting isn't possible, let's hope something good comes out of this with another redesign in the near future based on readers' comments.

the funny thing is, if you compare the font on the new site in the article (seriously, take a screen grab, I did) and compare it to an IST site still on the old brand LAist for example. and overlay the two in photoshop and you'll see that it's exactly the same point size, exactly the same height.

The two differences:

1 - the old one was on pure white, this is on 1-2% gray.

2 - the old body font was verdana, this is arial

still, very minor - and if you're noticing both of those, I think you have more to worry about than a site design.

I hope this looks great on a 1024 x 768 display because it looks really awful on a 1440 x 900 display (MacBook Pro). Type is WAY too small, lines too long, text looks likes it's floating around unmoored to anything. It almost feels vandalized rather than redesigned. i haven't visited gothamist site in a long time so i don't recall the previous design but one thing i know it had going for it--legibility!

well there probably is no use arguing with Bob, I trust that you're right. that said (and granted I know nothing about computers), I can't be making this up. perhaps arial is a noticeably smaller font than the original? i came to the conclusion that the font seemed smaller or harder to read independent of all the other comments (too lazy to read through 70 comments before commenting myself), so it seems strange that a number of people would just be imagining things.
i am guessing there is another explanation.

An arial font is harder to read than verdana. While the height of individual letter is similar between these two fonts, the width is vastly different. If you type in two identical words in a microsoft word document, by setting one word in arial and the other in verdana, you will clearly see that the word set in verdana is roughly 40-50% bigger in width. Thus, the older version is easier to read in comparison.

Amy's right. Verdana is much more readable than Arial at the same font size. Just head over to LAist and see for yourself. It's partly a matter of width and partly a lack of whitespace with Arial. It feels like a lot denser block of text while Verdana feels more open and airy. Damn shame my browser doesn't support replacing the stylesheet on a site by site basis, or I'd define my own to overwrite the worst aspects of the new Gothamist.

Meanwhile, while they "fixed" what wasn't broken, they still haven't done anything about one of the most unprofessional parts of the page. Look at the pagenav and pagenext divs at the bottom of the page. Pagenext is a massive 28 points while pagenav is a dinky 12 points. That mismatch looks horrible, along with underlining. I like the way Flickr does it, with a box border around each div, no text decoration (underline), and most importantly, consistent font sizes! If you don't want to copy Flickr directly, how about using no border, no text decoration, black for the div background color, white font color?

Do the RSS feeds still work? Thunderbird thinks they're all invalid. And what is the "add gothamist" drop down supposed to do? It just jumps to a random page depending on which choice you select.

Physician, heal thyself. I don't see you adding a blessed thing to the discussion, Smithers, except for a personal attack. So why don't you just piss off, since you're already so pissed?

Sometimes change isn't always good, I think the prior layout was solid and this is throwing me off- the head tilting is an issue for me too, I feel like things are off balance and it makes me want to click that 'X' on the upper right hand corner. Go back to the old Gothamist, the one we know and love.

Neil,
I am sure that you've found some of the "this sucks-i'm gone" comments annoying, but you should consider that some people are respectfully turned off by the small font. I'm one of them. And so in my more respectful way of saying "this sucks-i'm gone", I'll say: I sincerely find the website difficult to read because of the font size, so I am going to go back to reading the Post online for my guilty pleasure.

Not to beat a dead horse, but I really did give this a fair shake over the past two days. Staring at Arial for extended periods is honestly headache-inducing for me - I'm not exaggerating. It's not a matter of your point size so much as the fact that Arial in any point size is abominable and we're bombarded with it daily anyway.

Ouch, this new design sucks. Just like when 1010 changed (the post now too), the design makes it too hard to find things, too much scrolling and shitty fonts. Finally, I am done with this site!

good, maybe you can find another obsession now.

good, maybe you can find another obsession now.

Like the new design. Hate how much longer everything takes to load. I've given up waiting for the page to be "active" to scroll through quite a few times already.

what's with all the haters? i love the new design. good work.

I don't like this new design at all, actually. The font seems to small for such a large layout. The pictures used to fit perfectly, now it seems hard to find ones that fit nicely.

The old design made Gothamist look like a nice little package, now it just looks like a regular blog that has pictures and text that are trying to fit akwardly in the spaces given.

BRING BACK THE OLD DESIGN! PLEASE DON'T SPREAD IST WIDE!