A while ago I saw this post on Mark Boulton’s blog about the new(at the time) beta of the BBC website.  If you haven’t seen the beta check it out, its great for a laugh.  It looks like the equivalent of giving a two year old a crayon, but instead of the crayon being sky blue its web 2.old.

This one goes to 11

I actually don’t really mind the 2.0 look as long as its toned down, but the BBC opted for huge rounded corners, gradients on everything, big font sizes, and a flash clock…a effing flash…clock.  Seriously do you really need a moving clock on a webpage?  There also seems to be a complete lack of icons, its beta so maybe they just haven’t gotten to that.

Widgets widgets everywhere!  Widgets are ok, when done right(I’ll get back to that point).  The website as a whole needed to be widgetized.  Ok thats getting pretty standard for large websites like the BBC, but they decided to put them in large blocks that remind me of a stupid kid trying to shove the pyramid in the round hole…or maybe trying to shove a box into a rounded corner square.

Did they even think about typography?  Maybe its me but the typography looks like they paid no attention to it.  I’m no stickler either, its just looks like random font sizes and argh my eyes hurt.

The Point Already?

Why write about this now? Because it is still there.  I figured this “design” would have been scrapped after it was torn apart the first time around.  Nothing I can see has changed, maybe thats a good sign, maybe someone just forgot to delete the directory, maybe they are hard at work and don’t have time to deal with this.  Now after having my rant there are a few reasons why it looks the way it looks, Mark Boulton goes over those in his post and I suggest reading it as he has more of an insider view point.

Now the point, I almost forgot about a point.  MSNBC.com is the point to all this ranting.  MS…NBC..redisigned their website into a beautiful mix of 2.0, widgetized, gradient, functional, and whatever buzz word you can throw at it, goodness.  And it works, there are some things I don’t like such as the flyouts for the menu, but they can be turned off.  Everything can be changed to my liking.  But the design works before I start changing everything.  The widgets don’t look like widgets.  The fonts flow.  The iconography tells me what I need to know fast.  The featured stuff is featured.  Its fast.

MSNBC.com got it right, now the BBC needs to play catchup, or just fire whoever came up with that “design”.