Telegraph redesigns, a tab at a time
August 3rd, 2008 • Design, Internet, Journalism
Once upon a time, I made magazines. When we wanted to change that magazine, we would gather three, four or five of our shiniest brains, stick them in a room for a period with a half-decent brief, and out would pop a fresh magazine - better organised, more contemporary, and all-new.
This morning, I opened Firefox to be greeted by an all-new Telegraph.co.uk. ‘Cept it isn’t. Oh, the home page is new alright: a much better organised affair, with none of the ‘You, boy at the back - can you describe the logic behind this page?’ that haunted the DT of old. Very nice, if short on novelty.
But then you start clicking, and realise that this is what my chums in the digital media world would describe as a ‘phased delivery’. Only news has the new look; move into another section, and you’ll find yesterday’s Telegraph, complete with that persistent left-hand navigation panel (which has vanished in the new news section).
It’s the same riddle that The Guardian has been wrestling with a while now: after several years of trading, your site begins to share many of the attributes of an unexploded bomb - cut the green rather than the red wire, and…boom. The only technique that ensures you leave the room with your limbs still attached is to isolate a wire at a time.
All that aside, the new Telegraph is breathtakingly straightforward; easy to read, easy to use. In fact, I can’t find a single tricksy element anywhere in the new design. Perhaps that isn’t such a bad thing; I can feel the pain of the support team for the recently-dandified Sky News site, who are still struggling to get the potentially ground-breaking video carousel on the home page to load.
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