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So, the new FA logo and layout...
6 years ago
This is the journal header. Nothing to see here, get to reading the actual journal yah goof!
Yeah I'm jumping on this as well.
Let's start with the logo shall we? Give it a look in full:
https://www.furaffinity.net/themes/.....o_20191231.png
Now it's important you look at this logo at it's full size first to understand my criticism. This is not a bad piece of art. It is however a terrible logo!
There's far too much detail and the elements that make it up are far too indistinguishable when it's shrunk down. And it will always be shrunk down because it has to fit the header bar at the top of the site.
When viewed up there it just becomes a messy blob. So it commits the cardinal rule of logo design: It's not distinguishable at all sizes.
But not only that....is that an F or an S in there? Is this FA or SA? Cuz that looks more like an S to me. So already we're off to a bad start.
But what about the site's new layout and UI? Well.....they suck.
The website's new layout is cluttered and crowded. The fonts are far too large, which further contributes to the cluttered feeling.
Alongside that so many UI elements have been moved and rearranged for seemingly no logical reason. Take for example the notes page.
Now you have your list of notes along the top of the page, and when you open a note it opens underneath the note list....why exactly? Why are they not side-by-side? Which was a layout that worked just fine.
How 'bout looking at an individual submission? The most basic of pages on the site. Can't be much to screw up there....right? Wrong. This is the most egregiously cluttered page of all. Almost everything that was previously displayed above or below the submissions is now displayed alongside the submission, stuffed into a tiny column along the right-hand side of the page, forcing the submission off-centre and over to the left.
Why is it necessary that I can see the stats, tags, species, gender, category, size, and the fav, download and note buttons AT THE SAME TIME as I'm trying to look at this pretty picture!? Oh and the fucking ADVERTISEMENTS are displayed in this same column as well.
The simplest essence of this site, and that has been fucked up as well. How can you make such a terrible string of design/layout decisions? Why is my simple viewing experience interfered with? For what reason? Because I cannot think of a single good reason why the submission page has been so heavily fucked with beyond "Change for the sheer sake of change".
The buttons are a mess as well. Why do "Post" and "Cancel" have equal prominence when it comes to comments and the like? Why is there no distinction between the two save for the text? Why do we even need a cancel button for that matter? Seems rather redundant.
Speaking of buttons why are the submissions page buttons only at the bottom now? Rather than at the top AND the bottom? Again this feels like a needless change that messes with the layout for the pure sake of it, rather than for any degree of usability improvements.
I haven't the faintest clue who the hell they got in to design this cluttered, disorganised, difficult to read mess, but I can tell you one thing for absolute certain; like with the logo, it was someone who had no idea what they were doing.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
Let's start with the logo shall we? Give it a look in full:
https://www.furaffinity.net/themes/.....o_20191231.png
Now it's important you look at this logo at it's full size first to understand my criticism. This is not a bad piece of art. It is however a terrible logo!
There's far too much detail and the elements that make it up are far too indistinguishable when it's shrunk down. And it will always be shrunk down because it has to fit the header bar at the top of the site.
When viewed up there it just becomes a messy blob. So it commits the cardinal rule of logo design: It's not distinguishable at all sizes.
But not only that....is that an F or an S in there? Is this FA or SA? Cuz that looks more like an S to me. So already we're off to a bad start.
But what about the site's new layout and UI? Well.....they suck.
The website's new layout is cluttered and crowded. The fonts are far too large, which further contributes to the cluttered feeling.
Alongside that so many UI elements have been moved and rearranged for seemingly no logical reason. Take for example the notes page.
Now you have your list of notes along the top of the page, and when you open a note it opens underneath the note list....why exactly? Why are they not side-by-side? Which was a layout that worked just fine.
How 'bout looking at an individual submission? The most basic of pages on the site. Can't be much to screw up there....right? Wrong. This is the most egregiously cluttered page of all. Almost everything that was previously displayed above or below the submissions is now displayed alongside the submission, stuffed into a tiny column along the right-hand side of the page, forcing the submission off-centre and over to the left.
Why is it necessary that I can see the stats, tags, species, gender, category, size, and the fav, download and note buttons AT THE SAME TIME as I'm trying to look at this pretty picture!? Oh and the fucking ADVERTISEMENTS are displayed in this same column as well.
The simplest essence of this site, and that has been fucked up as well. How can you make such a terrible string of design/layout decisions? Why is my simple viewing experience interfered with? For what reason? Because I cannot think of a single good reason why the submission page has been so heavily fucked with beyond "Change for the sheer sake of change".
The buttons are a mess as well. Why do "Post" and "Cancel" have equal prominence when it comes to comments and the like? Why is there no distinction between the two save for the text? Why do we even need a cancel button for that matter? Seems rather redundant.
Speaking of buttons why are the submissions page buttons only at the bottom now? Rather than at the top AND the bottom? Again this feels like a needless change that messes with the layout for the pure sake of it, rather than for any degree of usability improvements.
I haven't the faintest clue who the hell they got in to design this cluttered, disorganised, difficult to read mess, but I can tell you one thing for absolute certain; like with the logo, it was someone who had no idea what they were doing.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
Just you know... getting another opinion.
Well, literally two. They've got Yak and 1 new coder, apparently
Ones that aren't modded by incompetent boobs!
Like, if they gave us a warning ahead of time, that would've been great, but, it was just sudden.
I'm not fond of it myself, but, idk, maybe they'll take new ideas and such into consideration.
Pitiful, woeful stuff.