CNN have just launched their long awaited re-design to mixed reviews. And I must say it’s kind of not what I expected. There seems to have been a big focus on making everything smaller, contrary to current design trends, and with news sites, people tend to scan headlines and that will be a whole lot harder with the new design!
The creative is pretty modern which is great. Colours are strong and provide plenty of contrast to the news content, while the top navigation is simple, clean and very easy to use… However, I was expecting mega drop downs from that top nav – so I’m feeling a little disappointed there isn’t that level of shortcut to category content.
They’ve bumped up “video” to the first menu item which is a good move, although for some reason haven’t pushed any playable video to the home page? CNN have also squeezed this 300×250 island right into the main news area. Yes, great for advertisers, unfortunately not so great for reader who now loose this area in what would have been such an important piece of real estate… But there isn’t a 728×90, so I’m happy to live with that!
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October 27th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Sorry to break your happiness, but there is a 728×90 below the fold