Pitchfork launched a redesign last week. The reaction has been mixed. Some have picked on the new, subtler logo, the exclusive use of Helvetica, and the boxiness of the new layout. One person tweeted, “Not wild about the Pitchfork redesign. I give it a 6.8.” (Credit to Billboard for finding that gem.)
Sadly for Pitchfork, a site I visit often, all of these observations have merit, though they miss the real reason why people’s reactions are so meh: from the users standpoint, the new design does not have a clear raison d’etre.
To put it another way, is the content better served by the new design? To determine such a thing is near impossible, although I guess traffic would be a good benchmark. Reactionary blog posts are probably not.
Personally, I would have liked to have seen a more radical approach to structure. Pitchfork, like many sites who are juggling not only a lot of content, but a lot of different kinds of content, has not yet found a elegant way of seamlessly promoting that content. Their approach, which is more functional than it is engaging, is to dump each content type into its own box and then to order the boxes according to editorial priority—reviews, news, new music, video, respectively. They are more interested in making it easy for the user to find the kind of content they’re looking for, rather then telling the user what content they should be looking for. And while the latter may not sound like an appealing idea in the Internet age, it is a fundamental service provided by any editorial product.
So I guess I’m saying the Pitchfork redesign represents a minor cop out. I say minor because this is an incredibly difficult challenge, both from a design and an editorial perspective, and to be fair, the new design is visually appealing. Album art, photography and video are given more “room to breathe.” The site’s navigation is somewhat improved, especially on interior pages, where the site is doing a better job of promoting related content, creating an especially vicious rabbit hole.
Luckily, the content is so good, I’m sure they’re going to have plenty of more time to figure it out.
Loving the incorporation of animated gifs into Pitchfork’s “The Year in Photos” gallery. Hating the fact that the previous and next buttons jump around like little crickets.
[Animated GIF by Erez Avissar]
Pitchfork POV Concert Series lets you be the director ... fun!
Broken Social Scene - Texico Bitches
This is so much fun.
Try it out. You’ll feel like Martin Scorsese directing The Band. OK. Maybe not. But it’s a neat idea: make the user into a quasi live tv director by allowing them to switch up the camera view. It would perhaps be more fun if it were an actual live concert and you could see the view from the stage. I’m always curious about that.
Looks like Pitchfork has figured out a solution to its streaming music problem created by the shutdown of Lala. They’re using a music streaming tool built and powered by Yahoo! It appears, however, that Pitchfork is now hosting the music (which opens them up to more liability, it would seem, as far as copyrights are concerned). This is probably why we’re only seeing the player in the Forkcast and only sporadically attached to the album reviews (and typically only with a single). They probably have to go get permission now from the labels or artists to use the music, whereas before, with Lala, they could just link to what was posted by someone else.
