With regards to our website’s new design, the single biggest gripe heard from many (including from within the bunker) has to do with the naked header space. Where the banners at? People miss the variety and the colors previously found at the top. Why is the space so darn naked? Well, before answering that question I would like to explain a bit of the philosophy behind the site design. We have tried to make it a more community driven while still maintaining our editorial rights. When the news column was hidden away on its own separate tab it wasn’t being utilized to its maximum potential. Already, since our launch last week, I have been very happy with the quality of news links posted in the right hand column. People tend to step up their game and participate more when their submissions get more face time. We will continue to delete junk and spam from that column and the features (including comments) will soon be working. Likewise, the incorporation of Twitter allows us to communicate with and receive relevant tips from a much larger community.
And that brings us back to the missing banners. There was always a plan.
We are looking for submissions from the Sepia Mutiny community. We want artwork, several original designs, to adorn the top of our website. As with the banners, we hope to rotate the designs. Notice I said “artwork” and not just hastily designed graphics. We want you to wow us and blow SM readers away. This means you have to be pretty darn good at using Photoshop, Gimp, or the equivalent. Instructions follow below the fold.
INSTRUCTIONS:
We are not looking for rectangular art like the previous banners. Instead, the new art should fully integrate with the existing background leaving enough space around the SM logo and the search function. We are looking for mutinous art: something that speaks to the experience of being South Asian American, whether it be about politics, culture, entertainment, whatever. It could just be a really cool design that doesn’t speak to anything in particular but still captures the spirit of this blog in the mind of the artist. Except no Bollywood-only designs please. We reserve the right to be very picky in which ones we select for the website, although we appreciate the efforts of everyone that makes the time to try and submits something!
Here (native or compressed) is the template (.psd) you can download and work from. The submission has to be in the form of a PSD, PNG-24, or TIFF file. Please forward this post to your artist friends! Send submission to abhi [at] sepiamutiny dot com.
Finally, if you want some examples of websites that do a great job of incorporating artwork into the header, I recommend viewing these examples:
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p>http://www.darklightart.com/
http://www.timeforcake.com/
Abhi: Thanks. Without the Banner the site was like a “blah”. Will work on the banner over the weekend and forward you some neat designs.
Does this mean y’all’ll be getting rid of the weird, pixelated brushstrokes/ripped-paper(?) part of the header/menu bar? It’s the only part of the new design that looks unprofessional/unpolished to me.
I can’t wait to see what folks come up with!
No. It’s part of the design.
Does the art have to South Asia related ? or anything cool will do ? Is there a time limit for contributions ?
“Does this mean y’all’ll be getting rid of the weird, pixelated brushstrokes/ripped-paper(?) part of the header/menu bar? It’s the only part of the new design that looks unprofessional/unpolished to me.”
I really like that part; please don’t get rid of it. It looks like an old scroll with an edge.
Please ignore my first question. I see that you wrote about it inside. Thanks.
Hi,
It took me a while to clue into the new design. Yesterday I could seet the blog, column of links, and column of news stories across the screen. Now I see them as three vertical sections, so have to scroll very far down to see news. This part is yuck. I’m hoping its just a bug. Otherwise, I like the design. THanks for innovating.
I thought the redesign was part of an April Fool’s Day joke… my bad…
A little suggestion: could you make more of a demarcation between the end of one post with information on who posted it etc, and the beginning of the next one? As you scroll down, it isn’t immediately obvious which post the “posted by” refers to.
An Indian artists artwork here: http://sunils.wordpress.com/
That is one of the best parts of the design. If its pixelated it might be your browser. Send us a screenshot.
Do you mean you have to scroll horizontally? Change the resolution on your screen. The entire website fits easily in my browser and no scrolling is required.
The posted by, as always is at the bottom of the post. The colors separating posts is quite distinct on my screen.
If I may add, all of the whiteness is glaring on the eyes. Can the white backgrounds be changed to a muted beige or something? A “wheatish complexion” if you will….
can you bring back the banner with the sikhs in shades and the 70’s threads? that was da bomb.
This new GUI sucks, in my honest opinion.Everything looks clumped and crowded together, not very user friendly. News items in a separate tab was better. In all, it looks similar to Ultrabrown, but manish has a better layout.
Sorry…….
I agree the new GUI looks very amateurish in comparision to the old one. Besides being very bland and boring, the ripped heading effect reminds me of the intense design effort of a high-schooler.
One of the beautiful things about the old design was the rotating banners on the top that made the site design really stand out. Also, the old site did look very well designed with color and lots of white space. Now it just looks like another bland, beige site.
I also find the appearance of everything you have to offer on one page very busy to the eye. It’s very hard to focus on what to look at. There is just too much happening.
Sorry about the negative feedback but I thought the new design was joke on April fools 🙁
sp
Abhi, ignore my previous complaint. Everything looks ok now.
I like the new color. Reminds me of reading newspaper titled “The Hindu” based out of Chennai.
Good memories.
I have a suggestion. Could you move the purple strip (where the comments start) so that it’s AFTER the yellow strip? Right now it’s hard to differentiate one post from the next. Because the purple is darker than the yellow I feel it acts as a separator. Hope this makes sense. This isn’t easy to explain.
ZOMG WHAT HAPPENED HERE!? Actually, looks like a whole lot of work went into this new design. Bravo.
I very much miss those rotating “hastily designed” graphics, but that’s just me. Looking forward to everything the creative types come up with, though.
It will just take some time getting used to this new look. Please post a screen shot of your old design somewhere for those of us who might like to reminisce from time to time. Again, seriously, congrats on your big redesign.
Avani P – I like the redesign, however there are some structural changes which could be made for easier reading and some general usability improvements
The information hierarchy isn’t define well enough, after the banner, there is a fight for which content block is most attractive to the users eye. I would either add some contrast/spacing/colour to draw the user to the News Section instead of the comments
horizontal scaling – less that 1280 horizontal, causes the text to scale in a funny way, comments gets super long making scrolling hard, ensure browser compatibility
Information display for the comments – there is too much unnecessary information, and there is no “REAL” use from this content, ie. when the comment was made, perhaps an easier way to display it like . It creates more “clutter on the page, which will increase the turnover of perspective users.
white space – i would recommend checking out http://www.alistapart.com and http://www.andyrutledge.com/ The white space on the home page needs to be organized a little better to make it easier to drive users to the content they are looking for
Use of Colors – the titles of posts aren’t hyperlinked, while the titles of News is hyperlinked, its not intuitive, either maintain a consistent action perspective or expected frustrated users.
News Feeds – i would move the location of these. currently its in the “prime real estate” of the page, Users read webpages with the F pattern and tend to block out top banners, the news feeds are standard icons which can be placed anywhere. the contrast of it compared to header navigation will draw the user’s eye there, however its misleading because its not really important, the user is looking for the latest headline, not how to add an RSS feed
The individual post entry – i would frame the postings a bit more, its hard to tell who wrote which posting, is it the article above or below, also the back ground color is too close to the background of the page making it more difficult to distinguish
overall VERY GOOD for the first reskin, this looks great guys, sorry i work in digital marketing so its kinda the way i think, please take these comments as prospective areas of improvement
cheers,
cocopuffs
Abhi, I just sent you a screenshot.
I think you lost something very distinctive with the banners.
I could have used a copy! 🙁
May be you (or someone you know) can do something to make up for it.
I recommend nekkid padma for the unfurled banner. whot a suitable blend of easht and vesht. hic.
I totally agree. i vill start working on dat. Wander vat Abhi would say though. He is always against my inspired ideas. hic!
Weeks and months were poured into this. Thanks for your comment. 🙂
you boys are in luck – she just shot a spread for allure (warning: NSFW!)