Ever wanted to ditch what you’ve got and start over? I sure have. I’ve been wanting to completely wipe the style sheets clean for this site and start over with a blank slate. Finally jumped off the cliff. Wonder if anyone saw me do it. And if they did, will they understand why?
I didn’t really know where this jump would take me. And to be honest, I still don’t know where I’ll end up. I’m free-falling. It’s a risk. But I’m doing exactly what I’ve been wanting to do. That’s the fun of it, right? I’m trying something new. The old style sheets are gone. So is the familiar design that many people knew. But it’s not really that different…
Why?
Was the old design not working well anymore? Quite the contrary, the old design was working beautifully. After a little over a year and a half, this site’s design is the one thing that I’ve never grown tired of seeing. It’s an odd thing for a designer to be satisfied with one design for so long. Guaranteed, I’ve seen the design more often than anyone else. I was comfortable with it. Too comfortable, in fact. To the point that every time I thought about attempting design changes, I panicked.
I wouldn’t say the previous design is the best thing I’ve ever done. But I think it had become known and respected by a few folks. It was a simple design, highly flexible, and scaled well at many different window sizes. Yet somehow, the design gained a reputation of being an example of attractive design and a polished aesthetic. I started to wonder if I was capable of doing anything better. Self-confidence issues plague most designers now and then, especially if they know the next thing they do might be highly scrutinized. That’s certainly something in the back of my mind. When a bar is already set high, I often wonder if I can raise it any higher.
I knew that if I kept what I had, and tried to evolve it, I would only screw it up. I wanted to get back to the basics, and eliminate some of the complexity in the CSS that had built up over the past year and a half. Maybe I’m reacting to the abundance of over-decoration I’ve been seeing on sites moving toward more and more complex CSS. Design on the web seems to be going the wrong direction. We should be making things easier to understand, not more difficult to use. This design change is my own attempt at an excercise in clarity and simplicity. I literally yanked the old style sheets from Stopdesign, and exposed the raw, unstyled HTML. The CSS file I started with was nothing more than the commented header text I usually include at the top of each file. It was blank otherwise. I started with nothing, and slowly added only the rules I found absolutely necessary. Nothing more.
I didn’t have a very good idea of a direction I wanted to take this design. I don’t normally work like this, preferring instead to use a refined process that produces more predictable results. I only knew I wanted to stay simple. Simpler than the previous design.
I’ve been reworking the Stopdesign logo over the last few months (started before I learned of an almost identical mark from a Swedish company). The logo is an evolution from the previous version, with emphasis on a new form for the mark. The Yin Yang influence is further abstracted. Yet two forms working together to make a whole are still very much a part of the logo. Meta was used as a base for a customized type treatment. (Erik Spiekermann would probably call it a bastardization of his typeface, but I like it.) New business cards will need to be printed soon, but not until after we find new office space.
I didn’t want to plop the new logo into old templates. I wanted something new. I didn’t want to change just for the sake of change, but I didn’t want to step gingerly around the existing design. So starting from scratch seemed like the best idea. Like taking the plunge and not looking back. Flipping that irreversible switch.
Is it permanent?
I don’t know yet. Obviously this is somewhat reversible, should I decide to go back. But there’s something wonderfully refreshing about stripping everything away and starting over from scratch. Will the old design resurface? No idea. As the new tag line states above, change is the only certainty. Hope there were screenshots of the old version somewhere. I’m not sure if the WayBack Machine properly grabs all the linked/imported style sheets for each site.
While looking at Stopdesign’s raw, unformatted HTML, I was reminded how much work and effort I put into crafting the original markup for the site. I liked the markup structure that exists, and saw little reason it needed to change. If anything, I simplified the markup a bit. The nested spans in the navigation are gone, as are the <del> tags that were wrapped around intra-word spaces in some headers. I’ve also removed all instances of Farhner Image Replacement, and any additional elements and classes that technique required.
As I started writing rules into the CSS file, I purposely kept the design extremely simple, avoiding the use of complex tricks or hacks. I paid a lot of attention to little details. I focussed on typography, hierarchy, proportion, and the spacing between and around every element. Color is used sparingly, and only added as necessary. I prevented myself from adding back in extraneous lines and decoration of the previous design. Box model hacks are gone. In place of those, I’m using Tantek’s mid-pass filter to serve up an additional style sheet for IE5/Win.
Do I see carry-overs from the previous design?
Yes, of course. Certain design characteristics of the old version worked well enough that I replicated them with the new version. The design remained liquid, despite heavy temptation on my part to go with a fixed width. Column proportions are basically the same (65/35), though the layout now uses floats for both columns, instead of the absolute positioning from the previous design. The overall width is now pinched ever so slightly, constrained to 90% of the viewport width. At the last minute, I ended up reusing the thin, repeating photographic imagery in the header, mainly to create a connection with the previous design.
Incidentally, I have a strong affinity for all those images I’ve been using in the header of each section. They come from pictures I’ve taken in various cities over the past couple years. The locations represented in those headers include San Francisco, Miami, Vancouver, Kauai’i, Detroit, Madrid, Barcelona, Washington D.C., and San Diego. I’m not sure if the same images will stay, but I have no reason to get rid of them any time soon. Perhaps they’ll be updated with imagery from the additional cities I’ll be visiting this year.
What Exists So Far
The design here is the result of about a half-day’s work so far. From absolutely no style, to this. There may still be a few rough edges throughout certain portions of the site. I’ll get to them as I can. The Portfolio will certainly need additional attention at some point, as may other pages or sections.
I’ve restricted the type specs to two fonts: Verdana for body text, and Trebuchet for headings and special copy. (Yes, Trebuchet. In defiance of Andrei’s tongue-in-cheek request that it never be used again. I know, he was slamming it’s use for body copy. I actually think Trebuchet is nice alternative, especially when presented as uppercased, letter-spaced titles.) Prior to this, Stopdesign used Georgia for accent type. But the serif face started to seem pretentious when used on Stopdesign.
Most everything is basically in the same (or similar) place as it was in the previous design. So there’s nothing new to learn. It’s just a new look. Whether the new direction looks like a gradual evolution, or a radical departure from what existed before, I’m not sure. I see all the similarities with the previous design, so I see it as an evolution. Others may associate the previous design with strong background colors, and lots of structural rules that framed the design. Regardless, I’d like to keep this design as minimal as possible for a little while. I like what I see when I pare a design down to the essentials. After all, I firmly believe the presence of design should simplify our everyday lives, not complicate them.
Where will it go from here? Who knows?
95 comments (Comments closed)
Uh yes i seen it… very nice,
Hi Douglas,
i really like the clear, straight look of the new design.
It “focusing” on the important thing - the content.
Its the right mixture of no-design and minimalistic portion of colors and grafiks.
I like it more than the mezzoblue redesign.
Good work
Greetings
Rene
You’re right, it is very tempting to start over sometimes.
I liked the old look, I like the new look as well. Clean and pleasing on the eye.
Mezzoblue and stopdesign redesign so close! Bizarre!
No controversial new commenting system here then?
Both mezzoblue and stopdesign redesign their sites at the same time. I’m starting to wonder if you two aren’t the same person!
The redesign looks very nice. It’s clean and effective. Your attention to detail stands out. Like Andrei, I’m not a huge fan of Trebuchet… at least not where you’ve used it. It looks good at the larger point sizes but not at the smaller.
Keep up the good work.
THIS is a site! Yea, It’s 200% better than the old, dark, hacker-like, somewhat scary design. Fresh, clean, information-based. The future! Only you have to switch to Textpattern to complete your work :-)
/Gerrit - praegnanz.de
I agree too, it’s very tempting to just start over from time to time. I’m very curious about the outcomes of this fresh start. Amaze us.
Hey, who moved my cheese?
It really does feel like Stop Design lite for all those carb. counters out there.
I really did like the previous design, I don’t think that was ever in question. Change can be good, just gotta get used to it. I do feel free of boundries looking at the new design, and I do appreciate the hospital clean look.
mission accomplished.
I liked what you had, but it was so influential that I was beginning to see a lot of bad imitations.
I’m proud of you (I know that sounds silly) for risking more white space.
fwiw
Yes! back to the basic. The new layout has so much room to breathe. Love the white space. Change is always good. I redesigned my site last week and also decided to go back to the basic.
I personally prefer one thing about the previous design in particular:
It oozed design skills and quality. It was extremely well-balanced in terms of imagery, typography, small finishing touches and color use. Stopdesign (the previous look) was one of the sites I was most impressed with and most inspired by.
The new design, I find it too bleak, too much white and too little separation. But I will give you this: reading the above entry, you convinced me to keep simplicity, content presentation and hierarchy in mind while I work on my new site. More so than I was already planning, anyway.
So I can fully support your reasoning for this new design, and feel educated by your decisions and explanations once again. I just feel that this design is a tad TOO simplistic for the quality-bomb that is StopDesign, for me.
Oh, one last thing: I love the new Logo, very pretty. :)
like the logo, v strong.
Very clean, Doug.
I can well understand how intimidating it may have been to change what you already had; something that was not only interesting and distinct (previous logo niggles aside) but also very much fit for purpose. Because of these factors, I will miss the old design.
However, I’ve nothing but admiration for both you and Dave Shea. It seems we may well have a grass roots movement beginning, with text coming back to the fore of text-intensive sites (and I mean ‘intensive’ in a positive way).
Well well well.
To be sincerely honest, it immediately comes across as a default MovableType template with the trademark logo and photographs layed on top. It’s very straightforward and definately doesn’t get in the way of your content. Now whether this is a compliment to SixApart, or to you, I’m uncertain!
Admittedly, basic content and usability is first and foremost in any design, though the “pretentiousness” of the old design was one of the best aspects of it.
We all know and acknowledge that you’re a humble person, and we love that. Your site (old and new) uses the traditional formatting for links and sections which makes it a breeze to navigate. Mezzoblue.com’s integrated pop-under menus are nice, but they’re not immediately recognizable (nor do they work in Opera).
Overall, I deem the redesign a success. I hope and pray that there will be more to it than this though.
BTW: Palatino/Georgia is the new “dead” font, good call! ;)
Very nice! I’ve always had a soft spot for simple, elegant designs.
I have no problem with Trebuchet. In fact I often use it for headings myself, and I do agree that i looks great uppercased.
Oh, and the new logo is phenomenal.
I like the new design better than the old one, mainly because is so simple and clean. The new logo is great!
Looks like all the big designers are falling back on the basics and moving away from the increased complexity of CSS hacks and nifty tricks. Maybe this, too, will influence other upcoming designers out there to rethink user experience etc. instead of going completely nuts with graphics and workarounds? Semantic purity over “whatever makes it work”?
I’ll be glad to see those with influence acting responsibly after so long and introducing new techniques that actually go along with the best practices of design rather than inventing good ways to do bad things and spreading that around.
Good work!
I like your reasons behind this redesign more than the redesign itself. One thing for sure, it takes balls to do something like this to a site like this by someone like you. And for that, my hats off to you. I took a moment to consider what about the older design I liked over this one. I think the new design resembles a generic weblog default template too closely. That in it of itself is not a bad or wrong thing, but considering that the fact that this is more than just a personal weblog space to you but also the face of your design business, I am left wanting to see more “design” in the interface. I understand your focus on proportions and typography but will an uninformed visitor of your site understand that? What would be my first impression if this was my first visit to StopDesign? Will I see the designer’s intent behind this interface? Will it be immediate that this is a home of an accomplished designer or will it look more like a sister site of 37signals? These are my concerns. Hope this helps.
Wow! What a difference. To be honest, I always liked the content of the site, but I couldn’t stand to look at it for too long. The black became too heavy for extended viewing. The new design corrects this in a very clean fashion. Kudos!
Now I have the ability to dig through your archives for extended periods of time without getting eyestrain. Woo hoo!
Again, while it may not be complete, it is quite lovely. Keep up your good work!
Very nice, sir. I’m a big fan of minimalism, as will be obvious to anybody curious enough to click my name.
But yes, bravo. I enjoy the open feel more than the old design.
Why use something so unreliable as the mid-pass filter when a simple conditional comment does the trick 100% reliable even in the future?
<!—[if lt IE 5.5000]><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="only-ie50.css" /><![endif]—>
Ahh… I really like this design. Very clean and focused. Great job!
I think every design is always an evolution. There are things you always find to improve from the html to the css like you said.
I do like the new logo.
I do think the layout is a little loose on the right side, maybe just a small line or box around one of the sections would tighten it, IMO.
Are you going to do a style switcher between the two versions? That would be fun.
I looked at the most recent version of your site on archive.org and tried to view the stylesheet but got the message, “Sorry. We could not retrieve this page from the Archive.”
It looks like the WayBack machine didn’t get the stylesheet.
At the risk of sounding like I’m sucking up, I have to say that I REALLY love this new layout!
Not every redesign is great and some are controversial (see Mezzoblue), but as soon as the page loaded all I said was “Sweet!”
Thanks for explaining your thought process as well. I’m looking forward to hearing you speak more about this and other things in July at DDW Seattle.
Again, great work!
/cm
I like the new design. Clean. Crisp. I’ve been looking for redesign inspiration, and this might be it. Thanks!
Ha. Just hours ago I was going through your site hiliting for someone what I thought the strenghts of it were, and how it seemed to be very well suited to *your* purposes.
Surprise!!
Love the new logo.
Change is good - I would be rather worried if you didn’t. Sure everyone and their mother are watching in anticipation what will Douglas Bowman come up with here, but it’s your site after all and you’re free to do whatever you want with it. I like what I see so far.
My impressions are that this is a work in progress and you will be ironing the kinks on the new design over time (like this very form getting out of the gray frame in Firefox) and putting in new stuff.
“Less is More” never sounded this good. If this is going to become a trend, I’m all for it. We spend too much time with browser hacks and CSS tricks just to have it work on the browser-that-shall-not-be-named, instead of focusing on more and better content.
Forget the previous form comment - I forgot the design is more liquid now. Perhaps the form should be too, to some extent.
I love it when everyone decides to go at a little spring cleaning all at once. It’s great to see the good ol’ sites I’m used to be given a fresh coat of paint.
Great Job, feels… happier.
First off — I like it. It’s not so different that it confuses me and it didn’t really effect my use of the site. Good things. It’s obviously not finished, but it’s a nice start.
Second, I too have felt the desire to “start all over” and I’ve done that many, many times in the past. It can be lots of fun and a very educational and liberating experience.
I was thinking about all the redesigning going on in the last month or so and I can’t help but realize that some of the reasoning behind it all must have more to do with the owners of the sites than the users. Which is fine, especially for personal sites. The balance of goals (user, personal, organization as the case may be) makes for great site.
I know my last redesign was done more to make the site easier to maintain than anything else, thus allowing me to focus on content. Sure, I tried to make it more usable in the process, but my deciding factor to actually do it was personal.
Anyway, good luck with it and you know we’ll be watching, critiquing every move along the way! ;)
I love simple black(#333)/white/single color sites.
They are easier to read and they make the focus the content not the “pretties”. Almost all of the sites I put together revolve around this type of design - my own currently uses a splash of color because I felt I’d been like this too long. So I changed to a more designish/colorfied feel because it had been plain a long time. Quite the opposite of what you have done.
Overall, great redesign. (pst, don’t tell dave but…I like yours better ;-)
Also, the logo is very sweet. Looks good in color and in the bevel gray you got up at the top too.
This is beautiful. Obviously this will be and has been already compared to the mezzoblue redesign that occured yesterday. I don’t know if it was planned, but just between you and me, I think this one’s better! It’s much cleaner and simple. Here’s to keeping it!
I really appreciate the wonderful write-up you have provided. It is proof that great developers pay attention to the details and even when the detail is in flux.
I have found the site much easier to read the longer content. I am not sure if this is attributed to a change in the font color or there is less distraction around the content.
One thing that I had a couple co-workers point out, the headers do not stand out, which makes hinders scanning the page for the next entry.
Hi Doug,
Great job! From my point of view, the change is really good. I think that it has improve the “legilibilidad” (I do not know how to say it in english. I mean the usability when reading some text) of the right menu, though I think it needs something to separate it from the central text.
The logo is fantastic. I really love it.
Congratulations!
Doug,
I think the redesign looks fabulous and not in any form like a template or the like. The readability has been greatly improved, bc of the colors you’ve chosen, and the overall flow of the site feels much more intuitive. Good job!
Looks good Douglas, I was very pleased with the old design, but what’s the fun of running a personal site if you can’t play with it from time-to-time?
Your new logo is very nice, much more refined than your previous one (looks more like your original logo, saw it in the WayBack machine). Nothing like finding another business with the same logo to motivate for a redesign ;)
All you need is the comment highlighting feature (as Dave has implemented) to get the comments *really* rolling in.
Wow, I love it! It’s so minimilist, so professional, and the type in that there header is fantastic :)
I think this new design is a definite step in the wrong direction. It just is nothing to compare with the old design. It’s just text with some ugly pictures across the top. Simple? Yes. Pretty? Um, no.
As far as the new logo…I don’t get it. What is it supposed to be?
Awesome. I like it, a lot.
Personally, I think white is the nicest ‘color’ ever. Especially when used in the way you have now — it just almost always works.
I’ve been developing the back-end code of my personal / portfolio site as well. It also comes with such a great amount of white and for a point I feared it would be too much, but now I am just glad to see I am not the only one thinking like this.
The new logo seems to complement the site design very well. It’s rather modern minimalistic, yet it shows attention to detail was paid. I’d almost say I envy it — but instead, I’ll say it’s inspiring me to finish my own logo ;)
I love the new design. As I did with the previous one.
Doug,
Beautiful work, as always, and I love the work on the logo.
One item you may want to look into (and it may just be my machine), but on a flat-screen monitor, the grey you’ve chosen is so fantastically subtle that it almost renders white depending on the angle of the screen. Any chance of making a wee bit darker?
The subheaders under your header image look like they’re free-floating, which I’d guess isn’t entirely your intention.
Just a minor suggestion on an otherwise beautiful piece of work. Take it if you wish.
One thing I should definitely make clear:
This is most certainly a work in progress. Whether the page will remain white isn’t for sure. I’ll proabably be playing around with the design and adding small features as I have time.
When I started with this yesterday, I didn’t intend to include any style sheet. I was just going to yank the CSS and leave it raw for a few days. But I didn’t really like the one-column-as-wide-as-your-window look, and it completely buried the info in the side column. So I started out by defining the floating column structure first (5 minutes), then just kept going with it. This is what I get after a few hours of distraction.
I didn’t even intend to style it this much. Perhaps it was a mistake to push so far for the first change, as some are already assuming that this “look” is more final than I feel it is.
And I certainly haven’t written off the old design eiter. As I wrote above, it was working well, and I still hadn’t grown tired of it. Just thought I’d mix things up a bit, and force myself to start fresh.
Oh, yeah, should also mention:
IE/Win gets a slightly different treatment for the header. It’s a dumbed down version, because IE can’t properly handle negative horizontal margins within a floated element. So the faint gray background is gone in IE/Win, as is the overhang of the header image/background and the permalink icon beside each entry title.
Very minor, but thought I’d point that out as the one thing I’ve sacrificed so far for IE/Win.
The negative margin trick is probably the most complicated thing going on in the CSS right now. And even it is simple.
Hah!
Glad I’m not the only one! (though I can’t say what I’m doing really compares due to the different situations, but hey, the idea’s the same!)
Thanks for putting your process out there for everyone to see. Should be fascinating, and very informative.
I think its is a good start. Your old design was so good though it’s really hard to compare it to such a minimal design. The departure from the dark colors is certainly a welcome change.
If you do decide to go ahead and leave the old design behind I would suggest having the old one in your portfolio at least. As someone said before it oozed design skills. I thought of it as an excellent study in proportion, and even before your Garden entry it had “golden mean” written all over it.
Great job Doug! Your reception seems to be quite different than what Dave over at mezzoblue.com received yesterday for his redesign. :)
Now, the big question: did you end up touching the HTML at all?? There was a question posed at one of the sites not too long ago about how many of us, when redesigning a site, actually change only the CSS and touch nothing else. Most people agreed that they usually tinkered with the HTML as well.
Rob: did you end up touching the HTML at all?
I covered this just briefly in the entry, but yes, I did alter the markup a little. But not much at all.
In fact there’s only one significant change I needed to make to the HTML, the others (as mentioned above) were done to “clean” the HTML of extra elements that ideally weren’t necessary, like the nested spans I originally had for each navigtion item — they were used to independently control case, weight, and color of portions of the nav.
The one main change to the HTML involved moving the .pageheader outside of the #maincol. I tried a version without changing the location of the pageheader, but both IE/Win and IE/Mac freaked out at the large negative right margin I added to extend the pageheader outside of the #maincol div’s right-side boundary. I decided it was better to have the pageheader sitting on it’s own anyway. This way, it can either sit above both columns, or if I want to go back to the old way where it only extended above the #maincol, I can just constrain it to the same width and float it left.
So that one big change was to gain more flexibility. The other changes were all minor — and they were all deletions from the markup to simplify it, no additions were required.
Heh, I saw it happen Doug. Actually, I hit “refresh” about 10 times and loaded it up in IE as well as Firefox before figuring there wasn’t something going wrong client-side! Checking back now, it’s good to see what you’ve come up with.
I like the balls-out idea of just taking the plunge and starting from scratch, and I’ll echo others’ in saying it’s great to read your write-up of the process. I’m sure I won’t be the only one watching the evolution with interest.
You forgot to change your ‘favicon.ico’ file.
Like the redesign better. It’s nice.
re:”You forgot to change your ‘favicon.ico’ file.”
It has been changed. I thought the same but you just need to refresh it.
http://www.stopdesign.com/favicon.ico
…and the favicon absolutely stinks right now. I need to go back and recreate it.
The focus on the right (best) place. Good work.
Clean, refreshing and easy on the eyes.
Not like some other live redesigns we had lately…
Sorry i couldnt hold back on that.
Nice work.Love the logo.
Works great on Opera too…
Looks like everyone’s redesigning… and doing so live for all to see as well.
I must say that I really like the simplicity of this design, but then again I’ve kinda got a thing for minimalist designs (as my current and on-going redesign shows).
I’ll have to make sure to keep stopping by to see how the progress goes.
Looks good - much easier on the eyes, very elegant. I’m a fan of minimalism myself, so it goes over well.
For some wierd reason, I still don’t feel that this design is as finished as the last one. Unless I’m correct, and it really isn’t finished, Stopdesign looks kind of empty to me.
Maybe it’s the because of this huge amount of white, maybe it’s because I’m seeing things.
I’m a minimalist, and I pretty much like the design’s minimalism, but there was this feeling of “richness” in the older one. I can’t really criticise Stopdesign, I’m a fan of it, but I think there should be a bit more work on fine touches, maybe chaning a bit in the header of each post, maybe making the sidebar more separate than it is now.
All in all, a from-black-to-white change is a huge change, two extremes, so it’ll take sometime to cope with :)
Love the new logo treatment. May must be the month for redesigns.
Two words: LOVE IT.
Doug,
Very, very nice so far. And “so far” is really the best part about it.
One of the things that impressed me most about Jeffrey’s “redesign in public” was the ability to see how he tried different visual ideas out, worked out CSS related bugs, and evolved the site. It’s a great educational experience for both beginning and experienced designers.
I’m looking forward to seeing the same thing happen here!
-ch
I noticed that you used a table to layout the “Post a new comment” form. I know this can be argued as an appropriate use for tables, but it can easily be done without also. On my site I used the label and input tags with CSS to layout the form. Any reason to why it was done with tables?
Ah, the white is lovely and fresh. I love the header.
One thing though, if you’re interested in our feelings about it: in the old site, I really felt like I was in *your* space, no matter how far I scrolled down the page, etc. The color scheme and other touches really gave the whole page your design personality. I felt like I had stepped into *your* world.
In this new design, however, once the header is out of sight, it feels like I’m on any other MT blog. Now, maybe that’s okay with you, and if so, well awesome! And certainly you’ve thought of that already. But, well, it struck me the most of all the reactions I had to the new design, so I thought I’d share.
I like it. And I like the approach even more than the result.
I now insist on t-shirts. New logo appearing on the wearer’s right, over the nipple. On the wearer’s left, higher up, smallish type in the logo font: “quality-bomb”.
It’s always a good idea to Stop and Redesign. Heh heh. Very nice.
The new logo rocks. It’s as simple as that. I love it! Great work, Doug!
Hats off to you, Doug!
I’ll be coming back to check out your new design some more. Love to see it evolve like this.
You rule!
Not sure I agree with the current ongoing “evolution” among the so called webdesign gurus.
I mean, aren’t designers the one’s who are supposed to do the visually advanced stuff that not every average-joe designer out there could do. This site for example, in all honesty it looks like an everyday blog now - where are the design aspects? There’s 95% plain text everywhere.
I mean I’m all for making things easy to understand, but that doesn’t mean you need to remove every presence of design from your layout. You can still create a visually advanced layout with at least a feeling of design over it using CSS. If this is the way the CSS design gurus are going, then why do we even need designers in the CSS market?
The CSS design gurus should in my honest opinion be the ones that lead the way into new and daring ways of using CSS for design, certainly not be the ones who go back to the very basics before everybody else.
I’m not here to be abusive or offend anyone’s feelings but I need to air my opinion - I’m quite disappointed in the way things are evolving in the CSS design field right now.
When I was new to it all there was so much to learn and so much to get influenses from, by visiting places like stopdesign, mezzoblue and the other mainstream sites. Where will those “breeding grounds” for aspiring new CSS designers be now that they have gone back to basics?
Not sure you guys who want to spread the usage of CSS in today’s designs thought of it, but this is actually a big step back in the process. If you, the leaders of the pack, go back to basics - then from a design aspect there is no reason really to swap to CSS layouts. The reason I swapped was because I could do stuff that required javascripts etc with simple :hover effects and similar. And I came to you guys to learn and be inspired. With fewer mainstream sites showing off the power of CSS, the fewer reasons to swap.
I know there are thousands of guys out there who, like me, are looking for reasons to take the big step and swap to CSS, and believe me they need inspiration! When I came to Stopdesign and mezzoblue in the beginning I wanted to learn so bad how to do those cool :hover effects and nice layouts without having to set up a myriad of tables and javascripts in the process, just a couple of floated and positioned div’s and some a effects and I was done.
Now when you guys are actually even going back to using tables more and more I’m starting to wonder if you were all wrong the whole time? I mean seriously - you are asking yourselves the same questions too in regards to the use of tables in designs (referring to Any Budd here).
You have managed to convert a lot of designers from tables to CSS, me included, but if you want to continue doing so you need to continue supporting CSS as a design tool. Stopdesign now is not a good example of what CSS can do as far as designing goes. It’s a good example of a clean and crisp layout built with CSS and tables, but its certainly not the CSS gallery/mecka it used to be.
Seeing as this is a work in progress, I hope you will include some of your design skills in the process too.
On a brighter note, the logo looks good - looks like something a designer did.
Thomas O. Isaksson
I agree with Thomas in that the design is significantly simpler (I like that!) but I think we need to remember that Doug said he did all this in about a half a day’s work. Could you do this in a half a day? He’s not done yet. I’m confident we’ll see great things eventually, but you gotta give him credit for working with the time he had…
It’s all in the details my friend. The little things that most people wouldn’t jump to, but that make up the design — spacing, sizing, colors, fonts; the great thing about this design is that it’s virtually flawless for the level of simplicity that Doug chose to start with.
In any case, give it time. I’m sure it’ll get better. And Doug, I know the feeling exactly. I, unlike you, just got sick of looking at mine (sick from looking at it, really) so I’m almost done with my redesign, which took me significantly longer than a half day to get to half the level of this.
Good luck with the design, and congrats for taking the plunge. ~
I’m still undecided on Mezzoblue, but as soon as I saw this I loved it. I adore light and simple designs, particularly for blogs.
What more can I say - keep up the excellent work!
I’m aware this is a work in progress. I just wanted to let Douglas know that he is an excellent designer who need to show those skills off by pushing CSS a bit further then just floating some div’s and setting some font attributes. Stopdesign and the other mainstream sites are VERY necessary breeding grounds for newcomers to the world of CSS and they need to stand out more then a standard MT template (as someone mentioned earlier).
As far as doing something like this in a day - what’s so special about this? Its the very basics of CSS and shouldn’t take more then a few hours tops to do for anyone with some experience. It looks like Eric Meyer’s basic blog samples from his great books, nothing more spectacular then that.
If Douglas want this to look more like a blog he’s on the right track - blogs are simple and uninspiring as it is the content that is of value. But I certainly hope he has the intention of making it a must-see site for CSS designers once again, there are too few of them left as it is.
Thomas Isaksson
Just a quick point:
The favicon.ico needs updating.
Doug, I like it.
I saw you speak in Austin in March and you struck me as the kind of designer who really thinks about the information, the message, and the way it should be communicated.
I like the new design. It’s a step in the right direction.
It’s a direction in design that most designers don’t want to go down. Strip everything away and work with that. Don’t rely on photography, meaningless graphics, gimics to dress up the information. Once you can work with the bare minimum, and impose that restriction on yourself as a designer, I believe you really get to the heart of what design is all about.
For me, design about the following.
1. Clarity of information and purpose
2. Communication
3. Aesthetics (although this is inherent to appropriate design)
This new design addresses all those points. What it doesn’t take into account (yet) is your own self-expression as a designer. and this is often the thing that get’s in the way of the purpose of design. It’s a tricky balance.
There’s a quote from Lou Danziger that I love:
“[take] a minimal amount of material and a minimal amount of effort - nothing wasted - to achieve maximum impact”
In other words, less is more. Nice job Doug…
Your new logo rocks the house. Well done - your site continues to be one of my inspirations.
The old stopdesign was one of the three or four best designed websites, ever.
There’s your bar.
I won’t comment on the current layout, since it’s unfinished, except to say that I hope you’re not going to assume everyone has a new Mac, or Cleartype, as most professional designers seem to do on their personal sites.
As an example, your H4:s look horribly pixelized on my 1,024x768 laptop. I can send over a sreenshot, if you’re interested.
Otherwise what Thomas said in comment 66 and comment 69, except of course that I disagree with his overgeneralization that “blogs are simple and uninspiring”.
Oh, and I’d like the old styles back as an alternative, just in case.
Hmmm…there’s a mixed responce to this design, even in my own head (and it seems yours too).
I do welcome the lighter feel, I do like the stronger, more prominent logo.
What I do miss can only be described as body. Pure, simple, real, something to grab your eye, body. (Yeah, I know, sounds terrificly scientific doesn’t it?)
Also, the logo’s starter “S” (the ring thingy) looks more like a “a” to me, it might be better to bring it back to an S again…
And the red hover of the menu items doesn’t feel right either, as there isn’t any other red in the page (maybe the colour from the chimney in the header logo would be a good one, just an idea).
I hope this comment hasn’t been to negative, but you’ve set yourself quite a standard in your previous design.
I liked the old design a little better, but the new design is sweet, and the new logo ROCKS. Keep it up dude /.
Just wanted to point out to Thomas that the only tables in use on the page are for tabular data: the calendar and the form. (OK, so the jury’s out on whether forms can be construed as tabular data, but I tend to lean toward the liberal interpretation).
Yes, this design is much more minimalist at this point, but the fact is that the only real change is to the stylesheets (correct me if I’m wrong, aside from the one structural change to the HTML Doug cited above, the other changes were unnecessary, except to reduce the weight of the page…). That to me is a testament to the power of CSS design.
Of course, this might be best be served as a teaching exercise; that is to say “sites need not be heavily styled to be well designed.” I understand the fact that the old design was much more of a showpiece, but isn’t that also the role of sites like the CSS Vault and Zen Garden?
Personally I like this design from a usability standpoint - I’m here for the content, and this design brings the content front and center. I think the design complements the content, rather than competing with it. (That’s one of the big selling points for the mezzoblue redesign as well…though that one’s much more controversial.)
I would just like to clarify that I did not mean to generalize all blogs as boring and uninspiring, I can mention a dozen that aren’t. But the overall masses of blogs are from a design perspective just that - boring and uninspiring. Sure they are full of good information and writing - but in general they bring nothing new to the design table (aside from the ones unmentioned).
Jeremy, I’m sure most of us who goes here know the power of CSS already - I know I do. But what proof of power is it for someone who’s just starting to learn CSS if he doesn’t get the whole picture?
The reason I’m picking on Douglas in particular though is because his site among some other’s are widely spread among the non-CSS camps as showpieces for what CSS can do (through literature, web articles etc). I’m just worried these type of changes will slow down the process of converting the remaining table-geeks.
CSSvault and CSSZengarden are wonderful at showing off what CSS can do but they alone are not enough. The revolution started (at least for me who used tables since the beginning) with Zeldman and the gang (among them I count Bowman) started spitting out really beautiful websites built with CSS just to prove what you can actually accomplish by separating content from design. When I converted myself I used to look at sites like this and truly be inspired by what you can accomplish - in it’s current state that whole experience is gone.
Of course it’s up to Doglas to decide what he prefer and I’m fine whatever he decides to do. I just want to point out to him how helpful his showcase has been to me during the conversion period and how valuable it would be to others.
I agree with your observation that a lot of new designs tend to be overly complicated to show off CSS trickery. I’ve felt a strong reaction against it lately, and it seems more people do — like with everything new fads move through the WWW like wave after wave.
The website still bears your distinctive signature in the design, which is quite an achievement.
Personally, I’m not too crazy about the new design. I understand that this is a work in progress, and I do realize that this may be fleshed out in the future, but as it stands, this looks like any other amateur design out there.
And I would know … I’m an amateur … >8P
You say “the presence of design should simplify our everyday lives, not complicate them” … what do you mean by “simplify”? Less visual design/eyecandy, or better accessibility/simpler navigation? I am convinced that both can coexist peacefully, and it is a mark of a great designer to find the perfect balance between the two.
Your previous design, as a matter of fact, seemed to do a fine job accessability-wise, without sacrificing the visual aspect. This design seems to be a de-volution … not particularly interesting.
Same with mezzoblue … the first time I have seen the site, I was impressed by the subtle accents, the fine color selection. It was a beautiful, smooth design to feast my tired retinae upon, white perfectly accessible … and now … I turn back to the orginial design … it’s a good thing Dave decided to retain it >8P
Has Jakob N. finally gotten to you guys … are 16px blue hyperlinks circa early 90’s to come back in style >8o
To be fair, retro is a trend in fashion, why should web design be different …
>8D
I do love the logo!
ib.
Hi Doug,
Looking good, specially like the simplicity of the design, its very effective, you should plan a trip to australia and give a couple of talks out here, i’ll surely be interested in attending one of your seminars…good work
That’s the difference between an obscure web craftsman and your average Doug Bowman. I’ve been trying to explain my redesign-in-the-making for french-reading people in the last few weeks because the resource is often found amidst english-speaking web celebs, whereas in other languages it’s not that frequent. My redesign will go mostly unnoticed, and the tutorial accompanying it will be read by 15 people.
Not that I’m jealous, mind you. You’ve got talent, man :)
(what the heck, if only 1 person finds it useful and learns something, it’s a good enough reason to write it, eh?)
As always, thanks for the inspirational post, Doug.
I personally think it is to clean, to empty. Enough whitespace is important, but there’s to much of it right now.
I would love it, when someone stands up, threw the boring “they all are the same” blog layouts in the trashcan, and does something ESPN like with their weblog. Weblogs tend to become boring in layout.
I think weblogs deserve some designing guts, it is all to …. vertically designed ?! :) Background here, building block here, shade here, … there is room for the links, favorites, and standard validation icons :P
I like this design better than the old one.
I understand everything you wrote in this post. I don’t understand one minor point. This will probably sound stupid to most other readers.
Why do you need to set font-size for your main content’s text?
I know, almost everyone does that. I know, good browsers allow readers to alter the font size; even IE also can do that in some conditions. But I never really saw a reasoning for setting the font-size in the first place.
Now you say you’ve put only necessary things in your stylesheet. So you felt font-size is necessary. So maybe you can explain, why?
I like it Doug. The black on the old one made it harder to concentrate on the content. Black pulls my eyes over. Now it’s much more pleasant.
Congrats.
P.S. New logo rocks.
Woah, very nice.
The best thing about your redesign? A terrific job with the text - font size, family, and color. Everything seems to fit perfectly. I think that this really shows your skills as a designer. Just look at the right menu for example; pure text, and it’s fantastic looking!
The second best thing: The logo, sweet work:)
Also, I like the centered look that you now have with the new header instead of the page-spanning old one. It gives the page a much cleaner, lighter feel, and helps everything flow together.
A supreme example of the beautiful design you can create with CSS.
well, I normally like brigt designs like this, but in the case of stopdesign, the old design was much better to me - and more unique for stopdesign. that’s what i think..
well, i have to say “doug, you goofed”. i am so bored looking at this site i can’t even look at it let alone read the content. what happened man? this looks like a movabletype template. what happened to style and beauty? are you on a low carb diet? this can’t be what my favourite design man came up with. it just can’t. i know you are just messing around with me. lord have mercy.
Wow, I came late in on this one! I’ve been distracted by the Dave Shea Experiment! I was taken aback when I got here, I thought the CSS failed to load. Then I read the post and it was interesting how the thought correlated with what you actually did.
I couldn’t agree with you more in your assessment of the complexity of designs showing up recently. I think (not to pick on Dave) that Mezzoblue is suffering from an overdesign for sure. His header is the perfect example of way too much going on.
I can see your current state of design as “in-process” and so I wouldn’t want to comment just yet, but I like the direction. Loved the old site, but I think you might be on to something.
The new logo *rocks*.
Tom
Gerrit - how in the world was the last design “hacker-like” and “scary” like you said above?
I am wondering how anyone could be scared by that design, I just want to find out about people’s mindset.
It was *a little* darker than this blue-white cloudy sky thing we have now, but “scary”?
Get a grip!!
I happen to like both of your designs… previous and current.
Today, while surfing around, a came accross an old favorite site that has a… well… similar logo to your new one.
Just extend the lines of yours a bit, and you’re GotoMedia [ http://www.gotomedia.com ] … sort of. :)
In all, though, I think you’ve got a refreshing thing going here.
i must say i really like the open feel of this partially-redesigned site. the single column of text with wide margins, large font-size, and large line-height, and the white background make this about the most readable site i can think of.
the taste of the new design on its way looks beautiful, but i hope the marvelous readability of this site isn’t lost.
Just to say that the new design looks particularly tasty in Safari on Mac OS X. Haven’t seen Trebuchet look that good for a while. I’m considering doing some experiments with showing Gill on the Mac and Trebuchet on the PC, however.. Gill just has some sort of uniqueness to it that I like :-)
On the topic of mezzoblue.. all respect to the guy, but it looks kinda amateur/template siteish to me, I don’t get the color thing.. BUT.. a lot of people whined about the new Wired and Webmonkey designs, and then grew to love them.. so my opinion could easily change. This is a common occurance with new designs. If people hate it, then you can be sure at least half of them will change their minds after a few weeks. I was the same with al,l of BBC News’s redesigns.
Nice, the better than ever. It’s nice, sweet … clean … soothing to my eyes. I love your new bluish logo too.
keep up the starting over, every now and then ;)
Congo (DRC)
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