Wired.com "Redesigns"

So today on chat a friend of mine ping’d me with this: “Have you seen the new redesigned wired.com?” Oh, man I got to see this, I thought. “Oh, wow” was the first thought in my head, and not the kind of “oh wow” you would think, it was more like “oh crap what did they do!” The new wired site is hideous (only my opinion, I’m sure there will be some that love it), its a lot of things that could have gone right, gone wrong.

Lets start from the top, mainly because thats probably the worst part of the entire thing. Today it has two ads for Planet Earth on Discovery wrapping the identity of the site. Nevermind that you have two ads that are virtually the same only inches from each other, but they sandwich the logo like a bad pastrami on rye. It seems that ad sales must be a little dry over at Wired news, otherwise I’m sure they would’ve opted for two ads that were slightly different.

As you move down through what looks like unstyled content (I tried refreshing twice just to make sure) you end up in this little section of square purgatory. I mean I love a square grid as much as the next guy but it has to be done right.

To top it off once you click on their 3-D (yep thats right, MTV style) sub nav you end up going into pages that look like a bad mix of Doug Bowman’s original design and what they have “evolved” to with this new approach.

Alright, take a breath, I feel better. I needed to get that off my chest. I’m sure this new design will lend itself to some great case studies on how it could’ve gone better. I look forward to the forthcoming discussions. Maybe its all a mistake and we will wake up tomorrow with the real redesign… a boy can dream.

Update: looks like I’m not the only one with strong feelings about the new design.