Guardian Website Gets (Partial) Redesign
The Guardian’s website is widely viewed as one of the most successful attempts by a traditional publisher to grasp the possibilities of the internet. It consistently wins major awards, has a huge worldwide user base (although The Telegraph has claimed that it more traffic from the UK) and has made great strides in integrating Web 2.0 functionality into the site (such as the travel section written by readers).
However, ever since the fantastic relaunch of the main paper in the Berliner format the main site has looked slightly old in comparison to its paper based partner. But now the site has had a fantastic redesign, bringing it right up to date. The Guardian home page now has a similar look and feel to the newspaper, with larger text, prominent images, and a clear & uncluttered design. It’s long overdue and I’m very glad that they’ve done it.
BUT! The redesign does not appear to go any deeper than the homepage. Click on any of the stories on the home page, and you arrive on the same page design that the site has had for quite a while. The Web 2.0 fonts disappear, the margins move in, and a general feeling of disappointment descends on me.
At the time of the launch of the Berliner format Guardian paper, I emailed the web team to say how sad I was that they hadn’t taken the opportunity to freshen up the site at the same time. I received a rather forceful response explaining how difficult it is to redesign a site of The Guardian’s size, and explaining that everyone had been tied up redesigning the paper (it was all done in house).
I also spoke to Carolyn McCall, the Chief Exec of the Guardian Media Group, at last year’s AOP conference, where she explained that they were aiming to relaunch one section of the site at a time - such as the aforementioned travel section, and the Comment Is Free blogging site.
I do understand these issues (7 years working in publishing will do that for you) but I don’t quite buy the excuse. Using CSS style sheets means that you shouldn’t have to redesign every single page - simply the underlying templates. And whilst the article pages are generated as HTML, rather than something like PHP, and updating all of these would require some changes to the underlying content generation/management system, I was always told that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly.
When I mentioned this post to someone in the office, he said “You can’t slag off The Guardian!” And the thing is that I’m not. As a committed Guardian reader (although I hate lentils), and someone who greatly admires their innovation both on & offline, I can’t help feeling that this is another missed opportunity. Surely it would have been better to hold off and redesign the entire site, rather than building up expectations, only to have them disappointed as soon as you click through to the (rather old looking) news.
Thanks for your comments, and it’s good you like the new front page. Sorry the rest of the site doesn’t meet the expectations set by the front page, but at least you’re not longing for the old look
The key to the thinking behind the gradual roll-out is that we can do a (hopefully) really good job with each bit of the site, with a new CMS and the use of CSS (which isn’t widely used on the site at the moment) then relaunch it, rather than a huge big bang which imposes a one-size-fits-all look and leaves a huge laundry list of tweaks and bugfixes. This isn’t only a design job - it’s a huge technical and editorial job too.
There’s also an ugly history of botched full site relaunches among online newspapers; these are huge, complex, content-packed sites, and relaunches place huge strains on infrastructure and people.
Bear with us… we’ll get there in the end
(Neil McIntosh, head of editorial development @ Guardian Unlimited)
Thanks for the interesting post, and imagine my suprise when i find a reply from the Guardian themselves!
I do find the partial rollout very peculiar though but can understand the reasoning based on the level of work required.
Thanks for the reply Neil - I certainly have no great desire to see the old home page back.
Like I said, I worked in online publishing for 7 years and can certainly appreciate the hige amount of worked in a redesign of this size, especially when it involved changes or updates to back-end content management systems. I still get nightmares about some of the relaunches I was involved in, often involving upwards of 40,000 articles and similar numbers of jobs or other content.
I guess that I just see The Guardian as such a shining example of online publishing, that I expect more of you than I do of other sites. It’s a burden that I’d guess you’re happy to bear…
I guess i’m the only person who thinks the new design is absolutely terrible. everything is really large like i’m looking through some bifocals. (yes i know you can change the text size but it doesnt change the spacing). white space IS A GOOD THING on a newspaper site. it helps the eye focus on particular elements on a page, and is easier to read. with the new design the eye is just lost. sorry but the home page just looks like a complete mess.
i love going to the sections not formatted yet, its much easier to read. BUT HANG ON, today we lose the link to football on the homepage. what is going on??? it just gets worse and worse. another rant - you can’t view the results of polls without first voting? stupid.
why the multi coloured links at the top that was introduced today? is this a children’s website? i thought it was for intelligent people with liberal views who don’t want bling.
@Jan - this post was actually about last year’s, much less radical, redesign. I’ve got some thoughts on the new one (including the lack of a football link) and will be posting about it in more detail soon.