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Just finished a redesign of my news site, ShortFormBlog. Would love feedback.

2 points by shortformblog 17y ago

shortformblog 17y ago
Hi guys, My name's Ernie Smith, and I run this site called ShortFormBlog. It's something of a big, broad side project I do on top of my full-time job at the Washington Post Express, but the basic idea is that I try to use design and humor to give you the heart of a story using brevity. It covers a little of everything, but focuses mostly on news, politics and technology, with little regular features here and there. I've been working on the site for nearly ten months. In that time, I've seen what works and what doesn't with the site's design. So, I've been working hard to make sure it evolves along with the nature of how it's read. I had three set goals when I put together the redesign: 1. Simplify the front page: I felt that reading the news blurbs on the front needed to be a simpler process, one that was uncluttered. I wanted the focus to be on the simple bites of information, not all the other stuff that comes with the territory. So I tried to get the furniture out of the way to emphasize content. 2. Make the inside pages easier to navigate: When the site started, the focus was on the front page experience over that of the inside pages. Over time, it became clear that most people were visiting the site from individual links. So a huge goal was to make the site as easy to navigate from a retweeted link as the front page. 3. Encourage exploration: There are a lot of posts on the site – at last count, nearly 4,500. That number is growing daily. I want to make the site something you can dig into and look around for a while. I'd like to know four things: What you like, what you don't like, what's broken, and what's missing. Does something confuse you? Does something look really awesome? Can I expand on an idea further? Let me know. I want to make this site awesome. Any way I can help make it better, I'd like to. For contrast, here's the site's current design: http://shortformblog.com/?wptheme=shrtfrmblg http://shortformblog.com/?wptheme=shrtfrmblg Compare. Contrast. Try a few things. Let me know how to do this better. It's much appreciated.
DanielStraight 17y ago
I think the separators between posts need to be more pronounced. At first glance, it looks like it's all one big article and it's very visually jarring to look at it all at once.
- shortformblog 17y ago
  Just so I'm clear – are you suggesting that I put more white space in, or are you suggesting the color of the lines be darker? And does the separator style on the original site bother you? I'm trying to find a balance between function and silence regarding those. I don't want them to yell. My thought process partially came from the Facebook news feed, admittedly, and I feel like my lines are louder than those at the moment.
  - DanielStraight 17y ago
    I don't know what would make it more clear without being too loud. I just know that at the moment, I have a hard time separating articles from each other.
ApolloRising 17y ago
1. Over did the mega font size 2. Post separators seem to detract a bit from the design, might be because the font size is HUGE 3. menu font color sucks for contrast 4. No idea what the site is about from the header
- shortformblog 17y ago
  1. That's the one thing that's not changing about the site. When I first made the site, the whole idea was to play with scale. There's big type and small type. The idea is to attack a topic with visuals and to limit the number of topics in front of you. I've stood my ground on this, and lots of people like the site anyway. Trust me, it works. 2. Now you're just being a jerk. YC isn't a good place for this. 3. It shouldn't contrast, because then it gets in the way and takes your focus off the content. 4. Valid complaint. As the site's been around for a little while, I take that for granted. I'm a little link-heavy up top; I can change one of those to a description of what the site is about. I can also rework the title to add the slogan.
  - ApolloRising 17y ago
    Not being a jerk, sorry if it came off that way, you asked for feedback so I gave it.

2 points by shortformblog 17y ago

Hi guys, My name's Ernie Smith, and I run this site called ShortFormBlog. It's something of a big, broad side project I do on top of my full-time job at the Washington Post Express, but the basic idea is that I try to use design and humor to give you the heart of a story using brevity. It covers a little of everything, but focuses mostly on news, politics and technology, with little regular features here and there. I've been working on the site for nearly ten months. In that time, I've seen what works and what doesn't with the site's design. So, I've been working hard to make sure it evolves along with the nature of how it's read. I had three set goals when I put together the redesign: 1. Simplify the front page: I felt that reading the news blurbs on the front needed to be a simpler process, one that was uncluttered. I wanted the focus to be on the simple bites of information, not all the other stuff that comes with the territory. So I tried to get the furniture out of the way to emphasize content. 2. Make the inside pages easier to navigate: When the site started, the focus was on the front page experience over that of the inside pages. Over time, it became clear that most people were visiting the site from individual links. So a huge goal was to make the site as easy to navigate from a retweeted link as the front page. 3. Encourage exploration: There are a lot of posts on the site – at last count, nearly 4,500. That number is growing daily. I want to make the site something you can dig into and look around for a while. I'd like to know four things: What you like, what you don't like, what's broken, and what's missing. Does something confuse you? Does something look really awesome? Can I expand on an idea further? Let me know. I want to make this site awesome. Any way I can help make it better, I'd like to. For contrast, here's the site's current design: http://shortformblog.com/?wptheme=shrtfrmblg http://shortformblog.com/?wptheme=shrtfrmblg Compare. Contrast. Try a few things. Let me know how to do this better. It's much appreciated.

DanielStraight 17y ago

I think the separators between posts need to be more pronounced. At first glance, it looks like it's all one big article and it's very visually jarring to look at it all at once.

shortformblog 17y ago
Just so I'm clear – are you suggesting that I put more white space in, or are you suggesting the color of the lines be darker? And does the separator style on the original site bother you? I'm trying to find a balance between function and silence regarding those. I don't want them to yell. My thought process partially came from the Facebook news feed, admittedly, and I feel like my lines are louder than those at the moment.
- DanielStraight 17y ago
  I don't know what would make it more clear without being too loud. I just know that at the moment, I have a hard time separating articles from each other.

ApolloRising 17y ago

1. Over did the mega font size 2. Post separators seem to detract a bit from the design, might be because the font size is HUGE 3. menu font color sucks for contrast 4. No idea what the site is about from the header

shortformblog 17y ago
1. That's the one thing that's not changing about the site. When I first made the site, the whole idea was to play with scale. There's big type and small type. The idea is to attack a topic with visuals and to limit the number of topics in front of you. I've stood my ground on this, and lots of people like the site anyway. Trust me, it works. 2. Now you're just being a jerk. YC isn't a good place for this. 3. It shouldn't contrast, because then it gets in the way and takes your focus off the content. 4. Valid complaint. As the site's been around for a little while, I take that for granted. I'm a little link-heavy up top; I can change one of those to a description of what the site is about. I can also rework the title to add the slogan.
- ApolloRising 17y ago
  Not being a jerk, sorry if it came off that way, you asked for feedback so I gave it.