I feel like my problem with design in general today is that folks want to burn everything to the ground and start again all the time. Whether that’s with a website, or a new web standard, or a political policy. They don’t want to fix what’s wrong with things bit by bit, everyone wants Thing 2.0 whilst jumping over all the small improvements that are required to get there.
Lynn gives a step-by-step walkthrough of the latest amazing redesign of her website. There’s so much joy and craft in here, with real attention to detail—I love it!
Frank is redesigning in the open. Watch this space:
By writing about it, it may help both of us. I can further develop my methods by navigating the friction of explaining them. I’ve been looking for a way to clarify and share my thoughts about typography and layout on screens, and this seems like a good chance to do so. And you? Well, perhaps the site can offer a clearly explained way of working that’s worth considering. That seems to be a rare thing on the web these days.
My goodness, Meagan’s new site design is absolutely gorgeous! The colour palette, the typography, the texture, the motion design …it all communicates character and personality. Beautiful work!
Go deep, deep down the rabbit hole of Rob’s brain in all its colourful glory. Seriously, this is simultaneously a great write-up of how he came up with his site’s lovely colour scheme(s), and it’s a terrific primer on colour theory and why the HSL value in CSS is so, so wonderful!
Smashing Magazine has launched its lovely new design, but more importantly, it has launched its lovely new business model. Ads are gone. Patronage is in. This is a resource worth supporting.
Two decades redesigning/realigning the BBC News home page.
Dave has redesigned his site. Now it’s extra Dave-y.
Rob has redesigned his site and it’s looking lovely. Here’s the first part of a three-part series on the rationale behind the relaunch:
I don’t pretend everything I do or say online is worthy of preservation. But while I’m still breathing, I want to be the one who decides what gets preserved and what doesn’t. And I want it all to be available in one place. Owning and operating my own site is the only way.
Hell, yeah!
I’m doubling down on owning my own content, so I’m excited to have a less-crusty home for it all.
It’s fun! In a world where even sites that aren’t Medium dot com are looking like Medium dot com, I’m excited to try something different.
After Clearleft’s recent rebranding, I’m really interested in Happy Cog’s redesign process:
In the near future we’ll be rolling out a new website, followed by a rebrand of Cognition, our blog. As the identity is tested against applications, much of what’s here may change. Nothing is set in stone.
An open beta of Smashing Magazine’s redesign, which looks like it could be a real poster child for progressive enhancement:
We do our best to ensure that content is accessible and enhanced progressively, with performance in mind. If JavaScript isn’t available or if the network is slow, then we deliver content via static fallbacks (for example, by linking directly to Google search), as well as a service worker that persistently stores CSS, JavaScripts, SVGs, font files and other assets in its cache.
It’s all go, go, go at Clearleft while we’re working on a new version of our website …accompanied by a brand new identity. It’s an exciting time in the studio, tinged with the slight stress that comes with any kind of unveiling like this.
I think it’s good to remember that this is the web. I keep telling myself that we’re not unveiling something carved in stone. Even after the launch we can keep making the site better. In fact, if we wait until everything is perfect before we launch, we’ll probably never launch at all.
On the other hand, you only get one chance to make a first impression, right? So it’s got to be good …but it doesn’t have to be done. A website is never done.
I’ve got to get comfortable with that. There’s lots of things that I’d like to be done in time for launch, but realistically it’s fine if those things are completed in the subsequent days or weeks.
Adding a service worker and making a nice offline experience? I really want to do that …but it can wait.
What about other performance tweaks? Yes, we’ll to try have every asset—images, fonts—optimised …but maybe not from day one.
Making sure that each page has good metadata—Open Graph? Twitter Cards? Microformats? Maybe even AMP? Sure …but not just yet.
Having gorgeous animations? Again, I really want to have them but as Val rightly points out, animations are an enhancement—a really, really great enhancement.
If anything, putting the site live before doing all these things acts as an incentive to make sure they get done.
So when you see the new site, if you view source or run it through Web Page Test and spot areas for improvement, rest assured we’re on it.
Chris redesigned CSS Tricks and it’s got some really nice touches. I particularly like the stacked card view on mobile.
Ethan redesigned. It’s lovely.
And now that the new site’s live, I realize I’d like to keep working on it. I’m not just feeling excited to see where it goes from here: as modest as it is, I’ve made something I’m proud of.
Andy is sticking with the indie web.
Here, I control my words. Nobody can shut this site down, run annoying ads on it, or sell it to a phone company. Nobody can tell me what I can or can’t say, and I have complete control over the way it’s displayed. Nobody except me can change the URL structure, breaking 14 years of links to content on the web.
I second that emotion.
Ariel and Lisa have redesigned the excellent Spacehack site and it’s looking stellar!
The Perch Control Panel is progressively enhanced. Almost all functionality of Perch is available even if you completely disable JavaScript, or if JavaScript fails to load.
Mike’s blog is back on the Indie Web.
As someone who designs things for a living, there is a certain amount of professional pride in creating one’s own presence on the internet. It’s kind of like if an architect didn’t design their own house.
Paul gives the lowdown on the Google+ responsive relaunch. They set themselves this performance budget:
And this bit is crucial:
One of our major rules was that all our pages needed to be both server-side and client-side rendered. With server-side rendering we make sure that the user can begin reading as soon as the HTML is loaded, and no JavaScript needs to run in order to update the contents of the page.