As you’ve probably noticed (assuming you’ve been here before), Cult of Mac today got a new paint job. We’ve made a bunch of changes, most of which are designed to make the site simpler to use and the information within easier to access.
Having found that about 90% of Cult of Mac’s readers are using displays 1200px or wider, we’ve widened the site, to provide more space for content, [update]and then put it back the way it was, because lots of people complained. The simpler, cleaner layout means less wasted space and more focus for the articles, along with the ability for us to more easily add components. And the new navigation should make it easier for you to stream the content you’re most interested in. We’ve also rehoused the ‘top stories’ to the sidebar, meaning they’re accessible from all pages.
Over the coming months, further changes and upgrades will be made to the site, but please use the comments section of this post to tell us what you’d like to see. What do you like and not like about the site? How can we improve Cult of Mac and make it the Mac site for you?
137 responses to “Cult of Mac’s new design”
its a little too white for me
you guys need to add a little more color
What the hell was wrong with the old design. It was well done and had a unique feel to it. This seems boring and almost DRUPAL generic.
I LIKE it… good work!
DAG, white space!
very minimalistic….. I’ll be honest and say that I don’t actually go to your site much, I tend to just read it in bloglines….
Bit too plain and “blogish” for my liking… new ideas are good – but I am not so keen on this one… I liked the old one to be honest – it wasn’t like it was really dated or anything.
Don’t want to knock on it though… maybe just a tweak or two will bring it up into “clean new look”
I have to agree, it’s too wide and too boring.
The size and positioning of the search box cuts into the layout. It should be aligned with the columns for a more balanced feel.
I love Cult of Mac but I’m sorry this new theme looks like WordPress gone wrong!
I like it so far. Keep the content comin’ and I’ll keep visiting 5x a day. :)
Wider is not better (more content? – or more advertising)
1024×768? Some of us still use 12″ PBs (or 3:4 format screens), and the 1/2″ of side-to-side scroll isn’t worth it! What’s 50px in the main column worth at the cost of readability?
Don’t Like.. Too white for my liking.. The old one was nice…
Tad bit bland. Looks more like a techy knockoff than a well established Mac fan site…. although, I have really been enjoying the content!
Everything I hate about TechCrunch’s redesign….is now here too.
Minimalist, uninviting look. Not attractive. Very Un-Apple like design. Too much white, as others have said.
Like the content though. Don’t mean to discourage you from making the site even better.
Too wide for my 12″ Powerbook.
engadget does it better
the first attempt to read comments resulted in a “error establishing database connection”. new backend, too?
Hmmm, I have to say it’s a little too white for me. I think the expansive whiteness of this design could be livened up nicely by an alternate background color/design.
What about the 25 Greatest Apple Moments?
You said, you would compile them to 5 pieces a month starting with October.
Btw, I like the new design, but it is not as unique as the last one, but it loads faster.
thank God for full text RSS feeds is all i can say. keep up the good work and blog on!
Hi Ryan, nice design! Oooops, this is not Engadget! Oh my, sorry guys…
Really, what the hell was wrong with the past design?
Having a display wider than 1200px doesn’t necessarily mean having your browser window that wide.
This new design now introduces a horizontal scrollbar to my browsing experience. How about having the main column resizable?
Also, expanding the size of the advertising section is never going to be popular.
Gotta be fair here — I read thru RSS, and only get here to comment, and I can’t say I could recognize the old design. But what I *do* see is that this new design is much more minimalistic. Some folks will like it, some won’t.
Anyhoo, if this new design will make your lives easier, then I’m all for it! Your the content producers, after all :-)
Previous design was more outstanding. Something unique. This one is just like all the others…
nice ..
I use Vienna to read your site, and my display is actually not 1200px wide.
This is actually the first time I’ve been here.
Lotsa ads…
I like your redesign. I find it clear to read and navigate. I navigate to your site via RSS headlines in Google reader which I check every day.
i agree with guys saying that the new design seems boring and not particular as the old one. I usually read all “macrumors” sites for my pleasure every day and until yesterday my preferite one was cult of mac just for his look and feel actually lost to become one betweeen all other ….
Too white. Too “default blog style, click here to customize” ish. The only attention getting color is from your ads :/
The previous look was far and away better.
I don’t mind too much though, Cult of Mac is straying too far from what I want to know about (tech, cool uses of macs, new rumors, mac stories) and into the boring (mac fashion) and personal political agendas as of late. It’s been sad to see Cult of Mac start bright and then slowly erode into its current state, teetering on the brink of being deleted of my daily read. :/
Any thoughts, oh writers of the blog?
Cheers,
Thomas
Argh what have you done! It looked classy before – this looks like a teenage fan site!
Honestly the old design is better, because it’s unique.
Honestly the old design is better, because it’s unique.
While I generally like the clean look, I think you should make the header and your logo more distinct. The way it is now, the top ad banner is larger than the site name and logo, which hurts recognition value. I’d either get rid of the banner or make your logo and site name larger. Actually, getting rid of that top ad banner would probably be best IMHO.
Another thing to try out is giving the header area a background color other than white. You could do that with the footer and, maybe, the sidebar too. That would put emphasis on the main content and make the whole page appear less bleak.
Hi! Greetings from Spain. I must admit that I like the old design more. The new design is simpler and maybe we all need to accustom our eyes to the new design.
I also want to use this comment to say that i really like to read your articles. Congratulations, you make a good job.
I liked the old one better, sorry guys… too much white on this – also, it now looks like any blog page, the old one had a kind of mac-look which really fitted this site well!
:-(
Thanks for the feedback so far. Some responses to the main points raised thus far:
The old site: Interesting to see the comments about how many people liked the old site, considering how massively (and I mean *massively*) negative the response was to it at the time. I guess people dislike change, and I fully understand that. However, the old site just wasn’t remotely scalable in terms of layout design, and was causing major problems when it came to making any kind of updates.
Too white: This appears to be a common complaint, and I’ll look into this. The thinking was to strip back the surround from the old site (which people complained was too grey and distracting) and enable readers to focus on the content, rather than the background. However, since the design itself is clean now, elements can easily enough be added.
Site width: We knew this would be a contentious aspect of the redesign, but with our stats stating the vast majority of users are on 1200px+, we decided to go for it, to provide more room for imagery and content. *However*, if it annoys too many people, we can bring the layout back down by 100px or so.
Advertising: At present, the number of adverts on the page maxes out at four: one leaderboard, one MPU in the sidebar, and two leaderboards at the foot of the page. Compared to the majority of similar sites out there, this is almost no advertising.
Speed: The old site was pretty sluggish to download and render. One of the aims of the redesign was to speed the site up and enable readers to get to content more easily, hence the streamed nav, shifting the top stories to the sidebar, and simplifying the layout.
@jazz: Good point regarding the search box, which should be widened to the four-col width. Will sort that next design round.
@Thomas: Thanks for your feedback regarding the content of Cult of Mac. There has been diversification, due to a lot of new writers coming on board. Maybe I’ll start another thread so people can discuss what content people want to see on the site.
@Tom Borowski: I’ll look at implementing some coloured/shaded backgrounds. Another possibility would be to place the advertising on a shaded background, to bring the rest of the site forward.
The problem with this all white look is that there are no distinct “zones” to the site. Visually, it all runs together and is confusing to the eye. Try some colored boxes for the info on the right.
Btw, I can’t stand the new look and have demoted your site in my bookmarks.
I usually view your information via the RSS feed, but I preferred your last version.
Agreed with most above. I really liked the old design, it made you look very “mac-ish.” I would say primarily due to the metallic tones and gradients. This is much to stark and generic, and does indeed look like many of the starter wordpress themes I’ve seen before. All that having been said, I feel for you and the scalability issues.
Guys, honestly… I love this website. I truly do. I love Leander, and I love Wired. The design that was in place two designs ago was bad. Then you upgraded it to the cleaner version of that one, which looked a lot nicer.
The problem here… As much as CoM would like to become like the other layouts, it simply shouldn’t. The name guys, “CULT OF MAC.” This site needs to LOOK like a Macintosh. Or at feel like an Apple interface somewhat. I feel like I”m typing on a Microsoft website from 1997. Seriously.. Guys.. Please. I am begging you.
I honestly feel like crying guys. Please go back. Please. This is horrid. I feel permanently stuck in hell as I am writing this comment.
Please… NO OFFENSE to the designers/coders, they obviously can do their jobs well, but… for this site, this design, this feel, this much white, no gradient? I mean… come on… It’s not working.
I mean, has Leander even seen this? And approved?
white space, smite space.
i would use the ‘white space eliminator’ definitly.
(old skool; http://whoneedsdesigners.com @01:00.. and get the fluorencensizer while you’re at it ;)
okay, seriously, i like white pages, but i agree it could use a little bit more juice.
the redesign is horrible imho
Wow- someone call the wahmbulance. I’m meh on the new design; it’s certainly clean, although the previous one had a little more visual interest around it, this is certainly cleaner and more evenly laid out. So eh, I could go either way.
What I’d really love for you guys to do is something with your CONTENT. Give up on the Apple-toting celebrities, no one cares who had a paparazzi photo taken of them chatting on an iPhone or a new Macbook. No one cares whether Microsoft’s advertising does or doesn’t mean you can fit a Macbook Air in a manilla envelope. Cover relevant news and events, but give up on trying to break stories; you’ll undoubtedly be beaten to the punch – you guys aren’t a news blog.
You guys should focus on what you’re really good at, and that’s analysis, speculation, and opinion. I want to hear what YOU’RE looking for in new product releases; YOUR fears of what type of company Apple may become, YOUR thoughts on Apple’s competition, YOUR favorite products and your least favorite ones, what YOU would like to see from Apple or third-party developers in the future for any Apple platform, YOUR thoughts on product releases and revisions, and so on.
Bring me back guys, I know you can do it. :)
Way better than the old design. Why can’t people let go of cluttered sites? Must say I read most of your news via Netnewswire 3-Col view with the brilliant Ollicle Reflex stylesheet but than again my eyes don’t hurt so much now when I read it in full view :)
One thing though, maybe NNW is messed up, or my eyes are in disagreement on the subject of colours, but when I hoover over a link it turns green. Shouldn’t that be blue???
At the risk of sounding a wee bit defensive, I don’t think the response to my design was as “massively” negative as you claim here, Craig. In fact, the public response was quite the opposite (http://cultofmac.com/cult-of-m… though I’m sure there might well have been some private complaints.
More to the point, I thought your improvement on it was wonderful, adding a polish and attention to detail that it needed.
Your instinct here for simplicity is right on, though. Finding a distinctive look and feel that guides the eye is always “iterative,” as I’m sure one famous ideas man would put it!
@Dave: Thanks for the comment, which pretty much tallies with what I was going for. And, yeah, the link hovers are currently green. I’m kind of experimenting with the hover state colour, so that’ll likely change when the design settles down a bit.
@Rob: I should have been clearer, but I _wasn’t_ referring to the design you did, but the revamp of your design that I worked on. When I refined your work, I got a lot of flack from some quarters for it at the time, but now the gist is that people liked it. Hence my point that change usually jolts! Anyway, thanks as ever for your kind words—much appreciated. And apologies for any confusion.
Elsewhere: I’m reviewing dropping the site width back under 10×7. That’s down to Leander to OK. Also, I’ve added in banner backgrounds top and bottom (thanks, Tom) and will likely do something to the sidebar content early next week. However, I’m loathe to shift towards a reclutter, and so want to keep things clean.
I really don’t like it. Doesn’t make me feel welcome at all
My suggestions:
1) yes, for me it is also a little too white. Maybe this is saying “I liked the old design”, but I’d like to see something like this: a gray layout (for example, could be another colour) and then having the articles surrounded by a second colour.
2) A more distinct separation between the top stories and the ads… again, the seapration could be made of surrounding colours, but you could always add some borders to the little images.. or make the font bigger in “Top Stories”.
3) I like the little iPhone-like icon :) You could.. (I don’t know how to explain it) make it appear in the safari address bar, instead of the old icon.
4) I think that, with everything white, the ads pop up more and the articles less.. because the eye goes to whatever has colour and movement. So.. I don’t know exactly what could be done, but I would suggest these things.
Overall, I have VERY FEW mac sites that I read on a daily basis, and Cult of Mac IS one of them. No matter how the design is. :)
In the words of Homer, “Boooring.”
Craig,
great choice making the backgrounds of the top and bottom banners a grey gradient. Very subtle, doesn’t clutter and puts emphasis on the content.
Tom
Too much whitespace. Wasting pixels!
“Too much whitespace. Wasting pixels!”
There’s actually far less ‘wasted’ space on this design than the previous one, due to ditching the rounded box each article sat in and the space between them.
@Tom: The gradient device for advertising is one I’ve used before, and it seemed a good bet for this site. Thanks for nudging me.
This new design is hideous. The other design was awesome and I liked it a lot. This new design is a waste of space, it lacks life and colors. Please go back to the old design cause I might just delete Cult of Mac from my bookmarks…
Most users might have 1200 pixel wide monitors, but your utilization of the extra width is bad. Even in the 1800s they knew something you don’t. Wide lines of type are harder for humans to read. This is why newspapers still run columns two and half inches wide. Learn from what came before you, young Jedi.
the new wider layout blows. way to say “f you” to those that use less than a mega monitor. here’s a thought. don’t use absolute layouts. there’s nothing wrong with letting them adjust a little so some of us don’t have to scroll over to see everything.
also, there’s not enough white. seriously. there needs to be a lot more white.
Hey guys, there’s a rule in graphic design about the width of a line of text. Newspapers get by with 6 or 7 words on a line (which is about 45 to 50 characters) and a novel or that kind of book, with 10 to 14 words a line.
Your design is way over these values and to make matters even worse the linefeed is the same as the fontsize, which makes it hard for a reader to follow the line of text.
So, my advice to you is to do some work on your css: up the basic type size, and/or up the line feed. Or lower the column width.
As it is now you are NOT doing anything for readability…
Oh  a good example of a very well designed site is Daring Fireball. Even though the basic type is small, it is very readable.
Just because our screen resolutions are set at 1200+ width doesn’t mean that we want the browser to take up all the space. I typically have half a dozen apps I’m using, and the web browser window is much, much smaller.
Sorry to be negative, but it’s spectacularly ugly.
I’d fathom that most readers here are using Macs, which come equipped with some beautiful fonts which render gorgeously… but you’re using the same tired Microsoft web fonts that everyone else uses, and in a design that looks at best unfinished and at worst indifferent.
This was actually DESIGNED? By a “cutting edge” web designer? The old design was FAR superior.
All you’re missing are the google ads to finish this new “look”.
Seriously, this is NOT an improvement. Even Lifehacker and Gizmodo make more effort at jazzing up their bland, peppered with ads, white space. This screams “garage PC repair shop”.
What was the reason for all this? Accommodating wider screens? You can still keep the previous design and just widen things a little.
WordPress.org has lots of nice modern looking free themes if you’re pressed for time or money. ;)
OK. Quick post, because I’m pressed for time this morning.
First, thanks for all the feedback—especially those people who’ve taken the time to be constructive. The reason I put a post here was to provide people with a place to say their piece, and some of these things have been taken into account.
The first thing that is going to change is the site’s width, which will be knocked back by about 200px within the next three days. We tried an experiment, and it didn’t work. Therefore, we’ll be going with the majority on this one. This should also help those complaining about readability (although, interestingly, the content area isn’t actually that much wider than on the old design, and the font size/line-height is identical).
We’ll also be adding to this design over time when it comes to extra visual interest (note the new banner backgrounds, for example), but won’t be returning to the relative clutter of the older designs.
Now, to address some specific points:
@Gene: I’m not sure what you’re talking about regarding the “same tired Microsoft web fonts that everyone else usesâ€ÂÂ. Cult of Mac uses Lucida variants for its type, which are the same fonts Apple uses. And although most readers of our site use Macs, there’s still a very sizeable minority using Windows.
@Francoise: Our reasoning for this was outlined in the post. The aim is to make the site more usable and scalable for the various things we’ll be working on over the coming months. Due to the nature of the previous design, it simply wasn’t suitable for this purpose. Plus, frankly, everyone was always bitching about how dull and grey it was…
I’m really sorry to say this, i really hate the new look of the site, gosh its a mac related website, be creative,….or at least, go back to your old design,….
@mark and everyone else. Thanks everyone for the feedback. Nothing is set in stone. Craig is tweaking the site and will continue to do so. I for one think it’s an improvement — for the reasons Craig states above. If nothing else, it’s a modern, standards-based platform ready for future improvement.
I am a fan of minimalist design so I’m onboard with the redesign on that point, even though this is pushing the edge of minimalist for me, I’m tempted to say its not.
I do not however enjoy this much white space. It would just be far easier on the eyes if the background was darker. A lot of applications (almost all of Adobe for instance) are moving to darker backgrounds that can be stared at for hours at a time without nearly so much eye strain.
The other thing though, I don’t even know the cause of it. When I click on a post and read it, and then I click on my back button to return to the main article list, I expect to be taken back to the article I clicked on in the first place, not dumped back at the top of the page all the time. Is this just me thats getting this or is it a page design thing? I noticed this as a bug in the last design too so I guess it might even just be me, but I don’t get this with a lot of other pages.
I like it. Clean, simple, tidy and room to breathe. I like the blue line.
I’ll be honest, the first time I saw the new design I thought maybe there was some kind of problem with the site and that this was some kind of temporary design…….
The old design had style, this one feels cold & empty and not very mac-like.
The new design (as of 8-Nov) is much better. It’s still clean but has a nice Leopard vibe.