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First Impressions of Trove, WaPo’s News Aggregation Tool - 10,000 Words
Really appreciate this note from the WaPo Chief Digital Officer, Vijay Ravindran on my blog post. Great thoughtful review of Trove on Media Bistro. Critique is totally fair and exactly pointing the in the direction we’re going.
Nerdgasm! Star Wars Drawings Made Only With Type
Nicely done. I’d buy one… if H-57 negotiates a settlement.
"Success isn’t about achieving something in the future, but about doing something right now that you love."
Leo Babauta, ZenHabits.com, Oct. 18, 2010 (via michelleminkoff)
Vimeo has a new (or at least I *think* it’s new) “Watch Later” feature. Very insta-papery. All news content items should have this option, whether it’s text, video, slideshow, etc.
Another example of a blog design that could be well-adapted to a news website.
Brooks in Beta: 4 sins of news design reveals biggest sin: web co-opted print content, but not print's soul
Designer Lauren M. Rabaino (she of the redesigned PressThink.org) expounds on the 4 sins of news design, which are as follows: 1. Clutter. 2. Clutter. 3. Clutter. 4. Clutter. She has a point, no? If the design of news sites are failing, they are failing precising because they fail to do…
So NYU professor and media critic Jay Rosen finally got around to redesigning PressThink, his blog where he expounds on the “ghost of democracy in the media machine.” The new design by Lauren Michell Rabaino is tight and sharp—a vast, vast improvement over its predecessor.
The design features one beautifully simple (from the user’s perspective), yet remarkably innovative function: paragraph-level permalinks (circled above). Jay likes to write—he also likes to Tweet, Tumbl, etc. These permalinks allow him and any one of his many followers to pick apart his long-form articles and comment. Simple, yet, dare I say it, brilliant!
I know their not new—the developer’s post about the code behind paragraph-level permalinks is dated Feb. 2010—and I don’t want to geek out ad nauseum. But I just love how a small, simple idea can have such a transformative effect on content.
A superb login page.
Blog design should contain minimal distractions
And heck, while we’re at it — so should news design, since essentially, they’re the same: both ways to consume content. If news design wants to mimic digestibility of blogs, they would copy the same concepts. Stumbled upon this post this morning and fell in love with how damn clean it is:
Specific likes of this design:
- + Simple, clean logo
- + Huge, visually-appealing background image (fixed)
- + Minimal distractions on the actual body itself. No sidebar. Just a little sliver with a date and “share” items
- + Easy-to-find social media and subscribe buttons
Stole this style of css markup from @ahemhill. I dig it.
New theory about company taglines
If it’s not something I’d wear on a t-shirt, it’s not simple and compelling enough. Best example off the top of my head: Socialcast. Their motto: Knowledge is social. That’s spiffy. It’s a good basic threshold for determining the effectiveness of the message you’re trying to convey to both the general public and potential customers:
(Source: socialcast.com)
Love the typography
I love this “speed dial” concept on Recovery.org. There’s a big “Looking for?” button over which you can hover to choose who you are or what you’re seeking. It’s a quick navigation element, broken down with a different hierarchy than the main nav.
If we were to use this in new design, the “Who are you?” could be broken down by profession:
- Working Professional
- Student - College
- Student K-12
- Parent
- Retired
and choosing one of the options would filter the news down to what’s relevant to that particular age group.
You could also do the “What are you looking for?” concept, which for news could be something like:
- Events
- Data
- An overview of today’s news
- + Set your own filter (which would allow for customizability).
Just a few ideas.
I really like how hovering over a lefthand menu item on GOOD’s site highlights the active element across the entire page. There are only a few instances in which this could actually work and GOOD pulls it off well.
