Everyone’s been talking about the new design over at Adaptive Path. It sure is a beauty; a crisp, clean, elegant design wrapped up in yummy XHTML and CSS.
It’s no surprise to learn that the person behind this great piece of work is Douglas Bowman, the brains behind the Wired News redesign.
But there’s another site redesign that just slipped under the rader today. Local Brighton web agency, Message have launched their new site.
The websites of both Message and Adaptive Path have a lot in common. I don’t just mean that they both look great and take full advantage of CSS and XHTML to maximise download time, search engine ranking and accessibility. I mean that both companies use their websites to present honest, open profiles of themselves and what they do along with useful, relevant articles.
Honesty and quality, two attributes that are sadly underrated and missing from the websites of most companies. Most companies obviously haven’t read the Cluetrain Manifesto.
Message, Adaptive Path and 37 Signals are shining exceptions.
Actually, I’ve been wanting to link to a public beta of the Message site for a while now and I’ve had to restrain myself. They sent a URL of the forthcoming design to the Brighton New Media mailing list and solicited feedback there.
They used the feedback to refine the site design. I’m just glad they decided to keep my favourite feature: the most subtle use of Flash I’ve ever seen.
Go to the front page of the Message site and wait. Stay around long enough and you will be rewarded with a nifty little easter egg.