Redesigning Techcrunch | Hacker News Reader

Redesigning Techcrunch

bradfrostweb.com

72 pointscharlieirish18 comments

They overthought the whole thing. It's the usual design by committee mess you get when you take something that is undeniably simple (like a blog) and you elevate it to something that is not.

First of all, it looks like something straight out of the 90s that didn't age well. Secondly the choice of a sans-serif font for a text is questionable and the choice of Open Sans in particular is inexcusable.

The other day I was reading an article on my Nexus 5 and I couldn't help but notice that the text is just too small/thin and the whole thing is just spaced wrong.

If you ask me it' s a 4 out of 10 design wise.

As a non-designer, can I ask what about Open Sans makes it "inexcusable" as a type choice?

The legibility could be better. I personally find it easier to read this Bloomberg article http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-19/asia-stocks-halt-th... than this TC article. http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/18/mostly-believe-the-bitcoin-...

Spacing between words seem a tad insufficient, font color a shade too light, and line-height a step too tight.

With that said, it does look better on retina iPad than on my 23" ips display. (matte finish).

It's just too thin. There's a reason thin fonts on mobile OSes are used only for big text like date and time. Thin fonts are difficult to read, Open Sans particularly so.

Hmmm.. That's strange considering Steve Matteson (the type designer)[1] optimized the typeface for both mobile and web use. Perhaps the mobile browser you're using is rending it quite differently.

1: http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Open+Sans

Open Sans has plenty of weights to choose from, I don't think you should write off the whole font! http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Open+Sans

I'd love to know what browser / os you're using. I'm running a galaxy s3 in 'tablet mode' (lcd density set to 160 from 320) and the text renders nicely.

Discussion is veering: This is neither a Techcrunch article nor a discussion of this particular design which pleased the customer. It is an article about a website design workflow from a pattern lab† viewpoint.

pattern lab is collection of PHP tools for making web sites from organized, abstracted components.

␄

† http://pattern-lab.info/ (MIT license, lives on github)

I dig the new design, it's better than the previous one and it seems much faster too (not sure if this is because of the new design but that's how it feels to me). Good work and a nice write-up.

good effort, but the new design does make my head spin and thus i rarely go to TC anymore. it's just too much content in your face.

i find it interesting how they discuss and plan about fonts/colors down to the wire for UI sake, and yet miss the "bigger" picture of readability.

A lot of hard work by the team here, However, I agree with the comments---I rarely go to tech crunch anymore since the new design. Too much going on.

Thanks for sharing. I always like Brad's posts, he does a good job explaining his process. Some here may disagree with parts of it, but it's nice that he takes time out to show us all of this. Thanks Brad!

Enjoyed the read! Pattern Lab looks pretty interesting too.

Still 75 share widgets and 6 analytic scripts per page and WordPress?

2010 called, it wants its article back.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662630/is-undesigned-the-next-g...

Doesn't matter. After Mike departure, TC became boring, and the number of comments under articles dropped of significantly.

rm -rf /techcrunch

Good design, same shit writing.

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