website trends grumble
Big finish is updating its website soon, and in some ways it's really good (it's going to be much more useable on mobile devices), but I have a problem with the design.
Pics for comparison (current design on left, new design on right)
website trends grumble
My problem with the new design: it just looks so generic.
Sure, make things big and flexible and stuff, that's good.
But it's just a white background. That lovely shade of grey is gone, and it's just a bog-standard white.
The banner at the top is gone, replaced with.... bog-standard white.
Instead of a variety of colours, there's 3 and a bit.
It just looks like a completely generic store page.
website trends grumble
Here's a comparison of the pages for individual releases.
The layout of the new page? Wonderful and amazing and good.
The aesthetic? Completely garbage. It's a generic store page.
Notice also: with the old site, there was a different banner at the top of the screen, depending on which series the release came from. In the new version?
It's just nothing. A completely white void.
(An aside: that big red bar isn't usually there in the old site, it's temporary)
website trends grumble
here's a mockup that I just made. Why don't they do this?
It's still exactly the same, but it looks much less bland and soul-less.
website trends grumble
ok, so they've launched the new site. There are still teething problems (stuff taking a while to load, links that don't quite work, etc), so I'll save most of my judgements for a week.
But I want to say a few things:
• Actually using the site feels mostly fine. Many things are much more usable than before.
• It looks like they've made an unnannounced change: renaming the "Main Range" to "The Monthly Adventures". I like the new name, but I wish they had said beforehand.
website trends grumble
Also: I'm glad that they seperated out the classic series dramas and the new series dramas, that will actually help people a lot.
website trends grumble
@lizardsquid This stuff drives me nuts, too. It's like someone wrote somewhere "everything must be all-white" and people took it like gospel. I like contrast. And not having my screen blare out bright light from every inch. ;_;
website trends grumble
They show this image for how it looks on a mobile site, which is fine. I *like* that the mobile site is simple.
But why not make the white centre (which you can see already has a pre-defined maximum width) be surrounded with the old grey? Add extra visual contrast where you can. Make the actual release area stand out.