Journal Journal: Slashdot Redesign Part III 44
Jason's Design is a very strong example of a design that really tries to expand/clarify/simplify the Slashdot of today. His header is solid. The gradiant on the left hand menu is nice. His article layout is solid. The dynamic menu on the left hand side is an improvement on what we have today. I feel that his design has to many shades of green in it. THe slashboxes on the right are a bit dull, and that green titlebar used there (and on the left menu) doesn't quite match). I don't care for the gradiant on the 'slogan' space. I think that a bit more effort could be put into that space to make it look a bit cooler. Also there is no footer to speak of. Now I don't know if at the end of the contest the winner will be a design that breaks with Slashdot a lot, or echos it very strongly. But if I ultimately decide to go with the latter, this design has a lot going for it. Simple. Clean. Readable. Very well done.
Gregory's Design is perhaps even more tightly linked to the design of today. This design is pretty much entirely cosmetic. That is both it's strength and weakness. I like visually how he has made the left hand menu and right hand slash boxes jut a bit outside the main box. I like the look of his abbreviated articles. I don't like th elittle boxes around the footer menu. All in all I think the problem with this design is that it is simply to white. When you scroll down a few times, past the menus and boxes, it is not really visually distinctive. I think this is because his articles, while clean, lack a little pizazz... Ultimately tho, a design like this is very solid, but it makes me wonder why I'd change from what we have to this, since I don't think it breaks much from what we have.
Heath Huffman also changes very little in terms of layout. I share his design because he but some effort into the logo in the upper left hand corner. I think that's a nice look. I'm not sure if it' what I want- a 'newspaper' kinda rubs me in a print-is-dead kind of vibe. But I appreciate the look. The grid behind the articles... the binary behind the topic icons. I could go either way on them, but I appreciate the effort. The green/grey gradient just doesn't work for me.
Michael Johnson's design is still only a mockup, but it is a very strong design. A clean header echos Slashdot of today very strongly. Moving the login box up top is a smart decision. His menu is very solid. His article layout is very clean... perhaps to clean. Maybe green titlebars shadowed instead of the white ones 'carved out'. The real question for him will be how close can he get to this design in CSS. Truthfully this is among my favorite designs I've seen. It is very readable. Very attractive. Where he goes with it will be interesting...
John Reilly's design is another mockup. He shows some interesting stuff. Some of which I'm not sure he can translate to CSS. His design is unique in that he actually seperated the slashbox column outside the main frame of the stories. This is a cool design idea and looks really excellent. Unfortunately the advertisement space must be able to span the width of the browser... so if he were to align his slashbox column just below the ad, it would work technically. I think his logo is cool, but to tall vertically... Since he decided he wanted the menu up top, he chose to move the slogan down into that space. Unfortunately the topic icons are like 100 pixels tall, and his logo is really half that. I think it looks a little odd. He could drop the topic icons, rethink that space somehow, and have a really good base for an entry. It's worth noting that his articles are missing some data bits (dept line for example). But like several other designs we have, it's hard to judge a static mockup in the same way as you would CSS/HTML. I hope he continues to work on this.
Rafael Madeira's design is alas also a jpg. He slightly changes the slashdot shade of green, but I think it might work despite that
Phew.
Ok, with that, I have posted to this journal the entries I wish to share up to May 1. I have another dozen or so worth sharing still in the inbox, but I'll save them for later... in the mean time... keep the entries coming...