Nice write up Paul. I don’t think I’ve studied it as closely as you and I was critical of the new design when it first appeared. After a few weeks of use though I have to say I’m liking it more and more.
I think I judged it too much on the homepage initially, which as you say is a strange beast, it’s packed so full of content it’s hard to get a handle on the hierarchy. When you get off the homepage and drill down a bit the system really does work.
The BBC News and BBC Food relaunches have been great successes as far as I’m concerned. I was a little disappointed to see that the BBC have gone back to Arial as their first choice of web typeface, but I suspect that decision has more to do with how the dominant Windows-based browsers render Helvetica – very poorly, if memory serves.
I don’t think you need to stick your neck out too far though – I agree that people will probably be using the GVL3-based websites as references of good design and layout for some time to come, so calling it a design icon isn’t a stretch at all.
Here we go again! After all these incessant changes we are still in the realms of “beta” or should that be “beat up.”
Let’s go back to the old, old old page we could rely on and leave you free to mess yourselves up and leave the rest of us to depend on a home page that REALLY worked.
The MSNBC redesign has rendered that site unusable. There are reports that they have also lost 25% of their online audience.
I deleted MSNBC from my bookmarks, and have moved on to other news sites. It was a horrible redesign
@Stan Thanks for your comment. However, I’m interested to understand why you thought the previous design worked better than the new version—could you expand on your feedback at all?
Comments that amount to little more than “I don’t like it” aren’t particularly constructive or helpful.