Daring Fireball

As a blog, this site's design is much simpler than the other sites I've covered. The design is very minimalistic. The site uses one colour in its palette, grey, so it takes the emphasis on few colours to the extreme. This is excluding the ad on the left hand side, but that is under limited control of the designer. Iconography is very limited as well, with the only graphic element being star, in the logo and as secondary links. The lack of graphic distraction creates a subdued, zen feel and draws attention to the text.

Furthermore, there is an almost complete lack of boxes or dividers to separate the content on the page from the background. The background is one solid colour, and the left and right borders are defined indrectly by the margin of the text, which is fixed width. The lack of borders makes the text feel less constricted, despite the tight crop. There is a very subtle use of dots to separate entries when viewing them in bulk, but that does not create a box effect. Link posts and full entries are distinguished clearly by use of type; full entries have a bigger header. Text is set small at default, but there is enough line height to make it readable.

One really good thing is that the headers in link posts link directly to the source, with a secondary star link to view the post by itself. This mirrors the intentions of readers, whose priorities is to read the source in a link post, whereas some blogs often do the opposite e.g. engadget.

The sidebar links are fairly intuitive (even if colophon is a bit obscure of a word). One flaw is that the linked list and display preferences links are at the bottom of the page. There doesn't seem to be any reason to separate them from the rest of the links, and I almost missed them because of their location, and the length of the page.

Link

ESPN

This frontpage feels a bit like a mess, even though it really doesn't have that much content on it. The header is especially bad. The designers seem to have had far too many primary categories, so the menus run about four rows deep, making it look quite overwhelming for any reader. The main story is shown nicely with a prominent photo, but there's too much going on around it. It's understandable that there are ads there, but things like the TV schedule, a survey, and a Fantasy Games box just clutter everything. The columnist boxes have far too many links; it seems like the designers have tried to put multiple articles with the same theme in one section, but they haven't tried to summarise the additional links at all. 

The site uses a fairly simple palette, with one colour dominating the background and most other things being black and white, but I think the sheer number of photos on the frond page negates any plusses from the simple colour scheme. At least when you read an actual article, the page is mainly black text on white background, which makes it more bearable, but the sidebar that accompanies an article is overly divided into badly labelled categories. Plus, there is really no good reason to have the same set of ads repeated on the same page. Overall, the site just feels far too cluttered. 

Link

The New Yorker

This website looks very clean and attractive, especially the middle portion. The header is simple, and the labels in the top bar are self explanatory (except maybe "The talk of the town". The entire middle section is nice laid out and divided into neat boxes, each with a little description but with plenty of space to breathe. I especially like the section at the bottom, where you get all the articles in list format, for readers who want to see everything, not just what the editors have highlighted, but without clogging the initial view of the website. 

The site uses its palette of black and white well to keep the site from being distracting, while highlighting key areas, like the "subscribe" button, with a little bit of red. Links are mostly shown on bold with rollover underlining, a good compromise between clarity and distraction. 

The sidebars are a little messy, in my opinion, especially the left one. The designers seem to have made it too narrow and tried to cram too much into it, making it overwhelming for the reader. This is strange because the right sidebar contains much less but is much wider. However, when you read most stories, the left sidebar becomes much simpler, with much less content inside it. The flat structure of the architecture means the one level navigation bar is adequate for going round the categories. 

Link