keep up the starting over, every now and then ;)

Congo (DRC)

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.

the taste of the new design on its way looks beautiful, but i hope the marvelous readability of this site isn’t lost.

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 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 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

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.

Congrats.

P.S. New logo rocks.

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 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

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.

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

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.

The website still bears your distinctive signature in the design, which is quite an achievement.

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.

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.)