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Impressions of the Abduzeedo redesign

Posted by AtiKuSDesign on October 8, 2009 with 13 Comments
13

Well Abduzeedo, one of the biggest design inspiration blogs on the web, has just released a brand new re-design and I must admit I am a little underwhelmed.

The new design is certainly cleaner but in my opinion lacks any interest. The first thing that I noticed was the black section in the header. This area cuts through both the logo and the navigation and my first opinion of it was that it was a mistake.

The same sort of issue is visible at the bottom of the page where the strip of ‘stars’ don’t fit plush to the bottom of the browser and again looks like a mistake to me rather than a design decision. I’m not in any way saying that these are mistakes; I’m just explaining that these were my initial opinions at first sight.

There are some very interesting techniques used in the new design though. The first is the title display, where it overlaps with the article image. I think this looks interesting and is a very simple technique but one that I had never thought of myself.

Secondly, there is interesting use of the ‘text-shadow’ CSS rule in the comments title. They have used a light shadow effect to give the impression of a letterpress, which works very well (this only displays in browsers that support the ‘text-shadow’ rule.)

So on the whole, while the Abduzeedo redesign is no tragedy, I personally think it’s a very underwhelming ‘improvement.’

Still my opinion only counts for one, so I’d be really interested to find out what you think of it. Are you a fan? If you haven’t seen it yet be sure to go and have a look at it and make up your own mind

Critique Agent: "AtiKuSDesign"  -  http://www.twitter.com/atikusdesign
AtiKuSDesign is the creator and editor of the web and graphic design inspiration blog D-Lists. He lives and breathes design, spending 90% of his life online looking at a screen, finding inspiration everywhere. To add to his passion for design he is an experienced front-end and wordpress developer. Follow him on twitter or follow his complete set of online ramblings via his flavors page More posts by this author.

  • Hey Damian,
    True, you've got a great point. I mean, we ARE designers, right?

    One thing for this site, since it is coming up right now, would be to add threaded comments.

    Also, that UnHub thing you've got going on is pretty cool, I never heard of it.
  • Almost forgot…

    Where did the cool image fade-in as you scroll down effect go?
  • @Fabio - The design is definitely much cleaner and simple, kudos! really highlights the content.

    I have to say that indenting the title to overlay the image, however cool it looks (it does) makes it hard to read. Scanning down the titles is impossible to do now because you have to move left to right, down a little, left to right, down a little, left to right, etc. Creating a zig-zag eye pattern instead of just top to bottom like it used to be.

    Just my two cents. All the other attention to detail is sweet and appreciated. And, truly, the content is what keeps us readers coming back so for that, A+++.

    ~Oh!
  • Good points Kevin. I very much agree with what you say about scanning though I think this is countered by the fact that titles are HUGE, really hard to miss. I think for normal web users it would be an issue but for us designers, we'd appreciate it.
  • atikusdesign
    Firstly, Fabio I really appreciate your comments. It's always really great to find out exactly what a designer was going for with any piece of output.

    Pradeep, I do agree with you that the thumbnail view is better. I had noticed it but because it isn't the default view I wonder just how many people will view the site in that way? I'd be interested to find that out.

    Thanks for all the comments guys!
  • You missed thumbnail view...its better than normal view...
  • Actually, I was seriously surprised when i realized the free reign given to the user for sharing the content of the site across networks, Click any image on the page and your instantly given choices where to send it, very smart :D

    I love simple designs :)

    Regards







    Craig
  • Awesome. Good job Fabio. I love your blog. You do great stuff too.
  • i really like it
  • The whole idea behind this new design was to drive the user attention to the content itself and not to the interface and its elements, that's why I removed the stars from the header.

    In my opinion there were too many things trying to catch the users attention, like there were the stars, then the ads and then the posts with images. So what I did was clean up the site and then add that little detail where the title overlaps the image.

    My inspiration was from design magazines where it's the design content that makes the magazine cool.

    Thank you very much for the post about Abduzeedo's new design. We're still working on some improvements that will be done probably in a few days.
  • Great reply Fabio. It's definitely cleaner and I do get the magazine feel.
  • It's really interesting to hear your thoughts there.

    I follow Abduzeedo through RSS so I very rarely actually see the site. The content is fantastic though!

    Thanks very much for sharing your opinion
  • It's nothing earth shattering or mind-blowing but let's face it, that's hard to come by.

    Overall I like it though I have no recollection of the previous design to say whether it's an improvement or not.

    There's some great details like you mentioned. The presentation of titles for articles is very cool. I like the ability to switch layout from grid to extended. Lots of work went into that.

    The problem is that the blog is so popular that expectation is high and for some - he probably didn't live up to it.

    Personally, I'm blown away by what I cannot do or didn't ever think of. For this design it's 50-50 but I conclude it's a great design so congrats to him on the re-design.
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