The new design is fresh, clean and modern, and easy to navigate. The top box lets us highlight a story that we think is really important, and enables us to run big, beautiful photos and illustrations.
- Source readwrite.com
Behind the build of the new Element site
A new creative shop called Element based in Austin, Texas made a new site for clients and others to view.
Phil Coffman, the creative director, had this to say initially on Dribbble:
… essentially our first site was never meant to be a long-term site for us. It didn’t go into enough detail on who we are and what we offer. This new site offers much more content and gives us room to add our portfolio (which is coming soon) and discuss our services in more length. The brand evolution happened naturally over the course of the past year and this site reflects it.
This is the new SB Nation. It is more beautiful than you could possibly imagine.
Digg will launch again this week after the six-week “Rethink Digg” project by Betaworks who also builds News.me. This will be v1 even though Digg has been around since 2004.
What we will see is a Digg that is a different experience than it has been in the past, but will be an experience that capture the essence of what we need in reading and sharing news today.
This Digg doesn’t look like or even feel like Reddit. Focus has been drawn away from headlines and more about arranging content that is being read, shared, or viewed the most at that time or what’s popular.
How Betaworks is rethinking Digg it reminds me of what Circa is possibly going after: re-imagining the news.
It’s also worth noting what they found in their survey results prior to starting the “Rethink Digg” project. View the result here.
- Source rethinkdigg.com
High-res
Welcome to the all new Cage app.
We’ve rebuilt Cage from the ground up (all new code, all new design), so there’s a ton of new features but even more subtle enhancements you’ll pick up on. Our biggest goal in rebuilding Cage was to make it more useful, but keep it simple to use (leaving out features that are needed for the sake of simplicity leads to work-arounds…and that’s no fun for anyone). We love what we’ve built and know you will too!
- Source cageapp.com
Modern Furniture company, CB2, redesigned their website.
As Tina Roth Eisenberg points out the poor design in navigation, we point out the replacement of the product with a full-page ad.
It seem that the new design was inspired by the sales department. Never a good sign. Although IKEA’s website needs a major update while also changing their footer copyright date to 2012 (it’s not 2011). Details matter.
- Source twitter.com
Chicago Tribune redesign’s their website with cleaner lines. Wonder if they read Andy Rutledge’s piece back in July 2011 about designing a better news site… We do know they added a paywall.
Will say that after the “exclusive for member” section the style gets wacky.
- Source articles.chicagotribune.com
Microsoft turns the corner with a redesigned homepage. It’s doesn’t seem to be live yet, but can be found through a preview URL.
Their current design has a corporate feeling and most likely hasn’t seen a redesign in a few years. With the elimination of .aspx and the introduction of the Metro UI for Windows, Microsoft is getting bold with their design.
- Source microsoft.com
Literally just last month Rdio did an entire redesign of the interface they release this new minimal style today. It’s a permanent style meaning there is no option to go back.
What once looked similar to the style of iTunes has parted ways to highlight album artwork, the Rdio logo and their iconic blue and white. The only colors that aren’t blue and white are found in the album artwork as well as the subtle gray sidebars.
I actually like the direction away from the gray gradients as well as going back to the Rdio blue in places where it seems logical. What I don’t like is the poorly chosen font in the left sidebar. It’s an eye sore and we hope that’ll be a simple change in the very near future.
Also it seems that since there are no gradients to define the sections or structure of the layout the player at the bottom gets lost or feeling as if it is being crowded.
What took the prior redesign many months with a great amount of conscious thought makes this new design of Rdio feel rushed.
Now that Wilson Miner, Rdio’s prior design lead, went to Facebook after the first redesign I wonder what his thoughts are related to this new design. Rdio could simply be testing the waters and we’re all in “beta testers”.
Here is what some others have said on Twitter:
I applaud @rdio for moving away from an iTunes clone for their web app, but…that’s a lot of white.Love, LOVE the main site design, though.
— Andrew Crow (@AndrewCrow) June 29, 2012
Lessons learned from @rdio: If you’re going to ditch gradients, totally get rid of them. And use Helvetica. Always.
— Ari (@iqonicdesign) June 29, 2012
New font in Rdio is awful. Who did this redesign?
— Joshua Topolsky (@joshuatopolsky) June 28, 2012
At the end of the day this design is a step towards being a different look than other music players as the gray gradiants are gone. But, many can agree that it feels like a rushed design that will see improvements in the near future.
Be sure to let Rdio what you like and don’t like via their Twitter.
- Source blog.rdio.com
Summer of the Redesigns
Many are taking their much needed vacation time. Many are spending times with their friends and family. Everyone is creating new or reliving prior experiences.
Summer is a time where we reflect. It’s a time for those who design websites to look at the prior six months, reflect, and see how the next 6 months could change.
Why during the summer? Great question, because it seems as though most major redesigns take place during the summer.
