The New Shiny Escapist

[TilMorrow]

Oh god. *looks at changes* OH GOD! WHAT HAPPENED TO THE COOL COLOUR SCHEME AND AND EVERYTHING!?!? CHANGE IT BACK! CHANGE IT BBBAAACCCKKKK!
-End Scared Reponse-
-Beginning Serious Response-

This all seems quite unexpected and... white. I mean the colour scheme for the last layout was great, why'd you have to get rid of it. Also, I have the un-nerving feeling that I'm on Twitter now whenever I visit the site and I really dislike the annoyance that is Twitter. Oh yes and I miss the side Article boxes /weep. My Opinion? I really don't like the look. *Goes Blind*

 

[Marik Bentusi]

aesthetically it looks like they copied someone with a different entertainment product altogether, It's all style and no substance. The groupings of content make less sense than before, mainly because there seems to be no real thought put into it.

Agreed. It's like an artist who isn't familiar with webdesign had a field day without restraints.

I just hope The Escapist doesn't ignore this entire threat because "those who dislike just dislike change in general, not the actual design".

 

[axlryder]

This is seriously hideous. The entire aesthetic of the site is gone. All the personality is gone. The main page is floaty, redundant, the space oddly allocated and the white. Oh god the white. Never have I see a site manage to appear so simultaneously cluttered and empty. You've achieved a paradox in web design, so if that's what you were going for than I must commend you. I mean, you guys aren't CNN, you're not producing hundreds of articles a day. There's no need for so many news sections and, seriously, who's going to wait for a news ticker? I can SEE all the articles in that section just by scrolling down.

I will say that the drop down menus are nice, I like those.

Everything else is crap.

There was no need to completely eliminate everything that made the escapist, well, the escapist for the sake of a facelift. You could have just streamlined the icons, reorganized a bit, made it a little shinier and added a few new features. but this. I can not honestly believe this is the culmination of 6 months work. It feels more like you put a bunch of random design elements on a wall, got plastered, and threw darts at the wall, including whatever ideas you hit.

and honestly, I found the new youtube layout to be negligible. Facebook perturbing, but not a big deal. This, however, is just dreadful.

I did come up with a new idea for an episode of drinking games, though. Every time you see something about the new layout you don't like, take a shot. Actually, maybe not the best idea, seeing as many of us would probably be dead within the hour.

 

[Mr Fixit]

Designs change & i'll get used to it, but tone it down the white & that painful blue just hurt the eyes....

 

[Vhite]

Everything is ok so far BUT WHY F*CKING WHITE? It's my favorite colour but in dark room it burns my eyes.

 

[gbemery]

Likes
-I like the popular forum search listings, but so far thats about it
-Drop down menus of the nav bar

Dislikes
-I don't like the overall layout everything just seems...pasted to a random spot, maybe because I am so use to the other way.
-I think there needs to be more borders separating different elements because they seem to run together.
-Seriously though there are some font issues like with the main navigation bar pencil thin text is not appreciated.
-The "customization" is nice but I wouldn't really call it super customization. Plus i switch to one theme and it changes every time i change pages *sigh*
-I think organization is in order such as with the news page. The news box should be at the top so you know what page you're on and the latest articles are right in front of you.

In summary needs a lot of work. Plus I guess it doesn't matter what I wrote since I'm not a precious pub club member. Oh well.

 

[DazZ.]

Got linked here to report a bug.

On the DS tag the site menu has a slight white line at the bottom where the grey doesn't go down as far as the other bars.

Hows that for pedantic?

 

[mandalorian2298]

Ok,here is my constructive criticism based both on my own opinion and on the comments of other users that I found to be interesting:

A) THE LAYOUT

In the old design the right side of the screen was reserved for the banners of all ongoing series (videos and webcomics). Each banner had the series logo and, underneath the logo, the title of the most recent episode. So, I would log on, scroll down the screen and I would immediately know which new episodes have been uploaded. Now, that feature is gone and I guess I am supposed to click on about 10 series that I like to find out if there is a new episode available. Before I felt like you (escapistmagazine.com) wanted me to enjoy your content. Now I feel like the beggar on the bus station going from stranger to stranger: "Pardon me Sir/Madam, do you have an extra episode for a poor bored nerd?"

It makes no sense, save that the person in charge of the design(I had to fight really hard not to change the word 'person' into an insult of some sort), let's call him/her Sparky, decided to make the site "professional looking" and the colorful banners on the right side of the screen didn't fit well into Sparky's artistic vision.

Since Escapist looks (ignoring the new design for a moment) like a place run by intelligent individuals, I am sure that plenty of people in the design team tried to convince Sparky that removing those banners just to make the place look a bit more drab is completely moronic. I would like to thank those people and to express my condolences - working with stubborn people who have no clue what they are doing is one of the nastier circles of Hell.

B) THE VISUAL DESIGN

While reading through the Facebook comments of 'The New Shiny Escapist' article (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114736-The-New-Shiny-Escapist) I came across this one:

"I'm colour blind and the new sites horrible. the very white background, combined with the new font, is basicly unreadable for me - I have to select all the text and invert the colours to be able to read it. I do not like."

I am not quoting this to make fun of the guys condition, I am quoting it because I think that the new visual design of http://www.escapistmagazine.com is like Skyrim in reverse: everyone can hate it for a different reason!

Some people don't like the way it's offensive brightness hurts their eyes, some people think that the color palette is to cold, the new fonts look ugly (mostly because of the whole black-on-white thing).

For me, the worst thing about the new visual design is that it has no soul. Before, this site was colorful, charming and comfortable place. Now it is bright, cold and very, very serious.
Before the site was saying: "Welcome! Click on something, anything at all and you can begin having fun on Escapist! XD XD XD" Now it is saying: "Welcome. Please take a number. http://www.escapistmagazine.com is a serious, successful company. We don't care if you like us, but please admire us."

To put it in terms that you will understand: Dear Escapist, please stop pretending that you are EA Sports and go back to being what you are: Telltale Games.

 

[Kevon Huggins]

One poor English word will suit this
Mehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

[Bioluminescence]

I'm not really a fan, but I can live with all the changes except the article font. I find it much more difficult to read. Does anyone else have this problem?

 

[similar.squirrel]

This will take some getting used to, but I can't see why people are freaking out to such an extent.

 

[Goenitz]

Well obviously it was a bit of a shock at first and it'll take getting used to. But so far I'm liking it, well done escapist people.

I like it, thanks for updating the site guys. But with all the forum hate, I can see more changes in the future....

 

[tg851]

my feelings on the change cation big images ahead
Edit:fixed

Spoiler

 

[Sneaky-Pie]

Well, I do this kind of thing for a living and hopefully my advice will not fall upon deaf ears.

First some positives. It's a lot more streamlined and accessible which is great. You all have made it easier to get to content from one location without too much confusion. It's not a big deal things are moved around. People will learn.

There's a lot of white
Having an all-white background on a website, where the main attraction is reading, is going to strain the user's eyes. I recommend replacing the white with a light gray and the problem will go away.

No clear and defined boundaries
On the main page you have a lot of content. While that's not always a bad thing, the problem is the eyes don't know where to naturally land and cannot be focused on one particular thing very easily. This can be solved by adding clear boundaries for the content whether it be through a different color pallete or clear markers/lines to show the user where something ends and something new begins. It's just feels like a chore to browse the home page. A good example of a high-content and well-designed page is CNN [http://www.cnn.com]

Why a News Ticker?
People are very impatient, especially when it comes to the web. Having a timed news ticker does nothing but causes users to become quickly disinterested in waiting to view the content. Why cause a waiting period for that?

Top Nav Bar
The content on the bar is fine, the colors not so much. It makes the logo appear awkward and out of place. It also looks incomplete or is a place-holder. Something along the lines of this look might help:

Spoiler

---
That's all I have for now. If I see anything else, I'll add more. Keep it up though, with some tweaks and adjustments, it'll be well-polished and functional.

 

[RubinOnRye]

All the videos are outdated and the look and feel is horrible. please change it back.

 

[Trujkin]

I'm interested in what program your web designer is using. Was it done in house or a firm?

It certainly speaks to right now. More open and flowing. Cleaner, blockier, easy-to-read serif fonts. I dig it. The lowercase 'g' in the bodycopy is a great touch. What is the font?

Ah the graphic designer's burden. Asking all of the unimportant questions.

Also the availability of the video series via drop down was a great idea. Feels like the Gamestop site, but still clean.

It was done in house, the rest I'm not sure of. I'll check on the font

Edit: Carrie says it's "Lato" font.

- Nas

 

[Mr Fixit]

Had a few to check things out & this is a really bad change visually, the drop downs & the new layout are fine & will just take some time to get used too, but the text in those drop downs are damn near unreadable for someone that has GOOD eyes like myself. I thought the harsh colored texts against a bright background had gone away when we stopped using dos, please listen to the people & fix that. I personaaly miss the hot thread & lastest thread buttons for the forums. It just seems so boring & generic.... If you give a damn about the people that use this site you will fix these things

 

[Chaza]

It's too white but apart from that not too bother the menus are ok