The Economist launched a redesigned economist.com this week. New pages are preset to 1024 width (nice for advertising, less so for the 29% of Americans still surfing at 800×600) with a colorful top- and left-nav scheme. The basic design is modern and stylish. Online exclusives, like city and country guides, have been made much more prominent.
Lots of nice touches surround the content. I particularly like the muted color offsets and the robust footer, and the integration of items like Backgrounders is much better. And, of course, I appreciate that the Economist.com logo (which I created, pat pat) is still in use.
I have quibbles, but they are few. The light font colors on the home page detract from the power of the headlines, and the white space surrounding the content seems a little arbitrary. Economist.com hasn’t gotten around to updating its section indexes, either, which suggest the site was pushing to a deadline.
On a personal note, this redesign is a little bittersweet. Economist.com was overdue for an overhaul, but the new site marks the conclusion of my work in commercial web design. While I segued out of design several years ago, Economist.com lived on, and the fact that it was live for five years—my redesign launched this week in 2000—was my proudest design achievement. Now that it’s changed, I am somewhat saddened at the realization that my old career is officially gone.
Congratulations and good luck to the Economist online staff. May the new site serve you as well as the old.