I am certain Markus Spiering is a talented designer, and having not seen the final product or the research involved, I have no idea whether the new interface wi

I am certain Markus Spiering is a talented designer, and having not seen the final product or the research involved, I have no idea whether the new interface will better serve their customers. So I have no desire to attack this makeover as a poor design decision. But it is sad to see the famous Flickr aesthetic so substantially changed. Flickr was one of the first web apps, but it made itself easy to use and approachable by looking deceptively flat like a webpage. It communicated not with gradients and flashy buttons, but with tightly-written copy and a very precise visual hierarchy emphasizing white space. It was also, recently, pretty fast. The previous rewrite in YUI3 emphasized speed and I strongly hope they didn't revert back to the previous performance problems. As someone who designs and builds webapps, I find this a sad day. I aspire to build something as simple, flat, and creatively-written as the Flickr interface.