The new Nieman Journalism Lab is confident you will scroll down
Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab launched a redesign today, again demonstrating their wisdom regarding the interwebs. Everyone knows the last Monday in August is National Soft Launch Day. (Oh, I just made that up? Doesn’t matter. Nobody is reading this, just like nobody will notice that the Twitter bar at the top of NJL’s homepage is one pixel off. It will be fixed by the time the Uniques get back from drinking Mai Tais at some Cancun Club Med. Didn’t I just mention it’s the last week in August?)
To be honest, that one pixel—which is probably unique to my browser (hey njl, it’s firefox v. 6)—is the only proof I could find that suggests this is indeed a soft launch. Kudos! It’s a sharp, well thought out redesign. Don’t trust me. You can take a quick tour with director Joshua Benton.
So what does their redesign tell us about their vision of the future of journalism?
* Your users will scroll down. The new NJL features no less than 8 stories above the fold on its homepage. All its other offerings, the newly minted Fuego, Encyclo, its app and other Nieman spin-offs, are further down the page.
* More “magezine-y” design means more of a focus on features.
* Pick a pretty font for your headlines.
* Double down on Wordpress.
* Double down on Twitter.
Gawker’s new design reveals final trick: It can look a lot like the old design if it wants to.
Gawker has begun the long-awaited process of rolling out its redesign. Today the design popped up on i09, their future blog. Much has been written about the redesign: how it’s app-inspired, how it’s Twitter inspired, how it radicalizes the business of web publishing, how it’s a blog killer. What I have yet to read about—and what I did not fully realize until I visited i09 today—is the heavy burden it places on headlines.
Aside from the four featured stories on the homepage, the new Gawker design almost exclusively relies on headlines to sell its content. Bold? Yes. But what’s important to note is that this is nothing new. Headlines on websites—particularly those found on news websites with content heavy homepages—carry a very heavy load. For these types of sites, the difference between 10,000 pageviews can rest entirely on the quality of the headline and how well it sells a story.
Newspaper publishers are no strangers to this type of pressure. Newsstand sales, particularly for tabloid newspapers, hinge on front cover headlines. Lucky for them, they really only have to nail one headline—three at the most—to get your money. (See Capital New York’s daily The Front column by Tom McGeveran to see who does it best.) The interior page headlines, while important for tone and customer loyalty, are not nearly as vital to success on a daily basis as the headline on the wood. That’s why writing that headline is almost always left to the Editor-in-Chief or Managing Editor.
What if every headline carried that kind of weight? This is the case online. Each headline represents a potential click, a potential pageview that will ultimately contribute to your bottom line.
What’s remarkable is that many newspapers still foolishly think they can simply repurpose their print headlines online. The art of headline writing is shaped entirely by context: What art is adjacent? How much space is available for the headline? Who is going to read the headline? Is there a dek and/or bullet points? All of these questions have very specific answers which vary wildly from print to Web—not to mention the fact that the Web headline has the added pressure of search engine optimization (fodder for another post).
So where does this leave Gawker? Right smack in the middle of a headline bacchanal. Never have a string of words been so important to the act of publishing. Overwhelmed with information, consumers rely on headlines to find content quickly and concisely. Luckily, we are a generation of headline writers. (What are Tweets, if not headlines?) The new Gawker has absorbed this fact into its DNA. The only question remains is if Nick Denton and company have mastered the art of headline writing.
Who’s behind the new Forbes?
Over at Forbes, they’re REAL excited about their new site. And with good reason, redesigns are TOUGH. So who deserves a big pat on the back? Good luck finding out! New site doesn’t have a masthead. Nothing new, though. Old site’s masthead was all print. Wonder why they forgot to add it to the new site …
[Thanks, newzed]
What is this, a teaser trailer? It’s a video dedicated to just one aspect of the redesigned site’s functionality. It’s neat, but … a trailer? Never has a redesign been more hyped than this one. I guess since it’s celebrating design that it’s one paradigm shift I can get behind, just don’t ask me to endorse their Prodigy meets Contra music choice.
I literally had a brief heart attack watching this video. Apparently the new Gawker will be fucking nerve-wracking.
What a design co. can learn from the 37Signals redesign
37Signals launched a redesign last week. They blogged about the thought process behind the redesign here. It’s always interesting to see how the portfolio site for a leading design company changes over time. When your job is designing web products you’re obviously far more sensitive to the prevailing trends in design.
A couple of things of note:
* They try to redesign their homepage at least 1-2 times a year.
* Notice how vertical the page is and how little of the page’s content is above the fold. They are confident you will scroll down.
* Compared to their old design (below), notice the palette cleansing use of white space. This is a design company that understands restraint. It’s a little Apple-like, no? And I don’t mean that in a bad way.
* The page is very clickable, but the technology is not fussy.
* Like the old site, there is no nav and consequently, no tricked out anchored links with a jquery scroll to help the user navigate the page.
I have to agree that it’s a definite improvement over the old site. What the site loss in fun, it gained in seriousness. I guess that’s the point.
Too much prose today, so I’m just going to bullet point the list of reasons why I love the new Radiolab redesign. (For those of you who don’t know, Radiolab is perhaps the best show on radio that I happen to listen to on my iPod.)
* Love the use of illustration. Unique. Whimsical. Cute without being twee. (Scroll down for the full effect)
* Love the use of depth and shadow.
* It’s easy to find their most recent shows (all of which are awesome) and to listen to them.
* Comment sections are vibrant.
I know it sounds fanboyish, but the site works. It captures the spirit of the show nicely.
I’m really excited to see what Vulture looks like when it re-launches tomorrow. It’s been six months and change since I left my perch there, so I’m especially excited to see how the redesign has changed in that time. I wish those brosephs nothing but the best, and they have clearly gotten along just fine without me.
That said! I really hate this new “Talk” feature that they launched today. While I have little doubt that the feature will be successful — over the course of my tenure there, we worked VERY hard at building/engaging a loyal commenter base — I really don’t like what it stands for. Vulture, to me, has always been a valuable site because of high standards of writing that they hold themselves to. All of the editors/recappers/reporters on-board are smart, witty and thoughtful, which is why you see so many great conversations popping up on the site.
But this feature? It scares me because it cuts a primary ingredient out of the mix: the editor. Rather than setting up a discussion by presenting a well thought-out point of view over the course of a paragraph or two (or more!), these Talk posts are just a glorified version of all of the horrible method in which EW.com ends all of their posts (“Hey PopWatchers!”), only sans any actual opinion. I’m all for innovation, but this seems to me to be a devolving step that puts Vulture one step closer towards becoming a high-gloss message board. Blergh!
(Just so you don’t get the wrong idea, I still love Vulture! It’s the best at what it does, and I’m super psyched that my old Defamer hire, Kyle Buchanan, is starting there tomorrow. I’m just a concerned bystander, that’s all!)
Congratulations, M-W.com! You finally got rid of the dull blue border (remember?). The new design is definitely cleaner and easier to read.
One interesting challenge of note: since the content is just definitions, the interior pages tend to be very short. This reduces the amount of space between the 5 ads, the banner ad in the header, the two boxes in the right rail, the skyscraper in the left, and the banner in the footer. This is a pretty standard way sites have of increasing their number of ad impressions. Normally, pages with this many ads are naturally vertical, placing a comfortable space between the ads. This is not the case on M-W.com. I find it distracting. I know they need to make their money to keep the site free, but I wonder why they can’t eliminate at least two on the interior pages, so that the content isn’t overwhelmed by the flashing and the blinking. Isn’t the priority here to service the written word?
Congratulations, OnEarth.org on your redesign! Hazan+Co. is very proud to have played a part in it.
