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Old media redesigns

So how do you like the new looks of Stuff, NZHerald and TV3?

For the record the css for The Sydney Morning Herald is different Stuffs. Which also has an explanation about how the 'box model hack3' works. Nice.

Personally I think it looks crap with a captial "C"...
It's the same old format with new buttons... The NZ Herald should look likeit does when it's printed, and stuff, well it looked better...
TV3 has always looked crap...

I'm surprised how quick TV3 threw out their old design, but there still isn't anything to keep me interested beyond the video promos and listings. At least they didn't relaunch the forums (many a whinging Dragonball Z and Charmed fan hung out there back in the day)

The usability and general design prowess of who ever decided the new TV3 site was a good way to communicate effectively is just bung.

I mean look at it. Really. Maybe someone could put together a how to on whitespace and general layout for them.

I know bigger fonts are better in a lot of cases .. but you have to make them work for you .. I think the new beta from ninemsn is definately somethign they should look at : http://beta.ninemsn.com.au/ - smart, usable and designed for people to enjoy the experience, not grapple with flat txt

"The NZ Herald should look like it does when it's printed"

Interesting comment, how good an online experience do you think the Herald would be if we had done this? Serif typefaces (yes, we did our usability research), many many skinny columns, filler content all over the show.
Not to mention the content management overhead required to copyfit all that content into an HTML framework - thats a big enough task in print design, I can't even imagine how hard that would be and how flexible a template system would need to be to accomplish it.

For the record, the new nzherald.co.nz _isn't_ the same old format at all, its quite different. And numerous (many) usability concerns were addressed. Take a closer look (though granted its a little hard to compare with the old version now...)

Anyone got any sensible comments?

I think stuff is a huge improvement on the old, but that wouldn't have been too hard now would it... I'm just glad it no longer scales to 100% of my widescreen lappy.

The things that stand out to me about stuff in paticular:

- With stylesheets off the logo is almost unreadable, and doesn't have an alt attribute.
- Advertising appears before the site heading in the source.
- Navigation uses lists, which is good, but there's 50 or so nav items that appear before the content, and no "Skip to content" link for screen readers (that's a lot of tabbing)
- Primary nav items don't have alt attributes
- Design wise, I think it lacks the visual presence of the old site, due to the lack of colour, and the washed out blue gradient seems kind of lazy.
- Some small consistancy issues like the right hand column on the homepage, where the sections are cased properly, except the TECHNOLOGY heading in uppercase.

I can't say that I've ever spent much time on TV3 or Stuff, so can't comment on those, but I've got to say that the NZ Herald site is a vast improvement on the last couple of iterations. This is a site that I've frequented a lot (especially during stints overseas) and the faster loading, cleaner layouts are definitely a much-welcomed change in my books.

More whitespace, better definition between sections on the front page, nicer use of colour, improved highlighting of feature stories and latest news? Can't say that's a step backwards.

I can't comment on Stuff or TV3 but I think the NZ Herald redesign is a monumental improvement over its previous incarnations, not just in terms of aesthetics, but also in usability and functionality. I can understand their initial apprehension in investing much in a website that provides much of their printed content for free, but it's great to see they're taking this web thing seriously.

I haven't picked the site apart but I think the teams behind its redesign should be pretty chuffed with themselves.