I was chatting to an artist friend of mine about an exhibition he’s currently involved with that is causing quite a stir in some circles here in Melbourne. I asked him whether the extreme reactions that the exhibition caused bothered him or not and his reaction was that he was really happy about it because the dialogue (as emotional as it was) had caused people to think deeply about art and the messages that the art he’d produced was conveying. While many disagreed with elements of the exhibition it had caused even them to think through the reasons why they reacted in that way. His arguement was that ‘good art causes a polarization of opinions.’
I’m interested to follow some of the discussion caused by the redesign of uber-blog TechCrunch in the last 24 hours. It was done by designer Rachel Cunliffe (who did ProBlogger’s design also) and has been critiqued by quite a few bloggers (expressing a wide range of ideas on it).
Quite a lot of what has been said about the design is critical and there is some debate about how much impact TechCunch owners and editors played in changing Rachel’s original ideas.
I’m not really sure where I sit with the redesign as compared to the old one (I rarely read it in anything other than Bloglines so barely remember the old one) but I’m more interested in the discussion that it’s generated which has brought up some really worthwhile discussion points including:
- the possible points of tension between a blog owner and designer
- the placement of advertising on a blog
- whether blogs should have ads on them
- whether a blog’s design should reflect it’s topic – and how
- what is ‘web 2.0’ design?
Read about some of the opinions and explanations of the new Tech Crunch design:
- Crunch Notes – official explanations
- Nik Cubrilovic – more official announcements
- Ouriel’s Poll – a poll on what people think about the new design
- Rachel’s Announcement (the comments are interesting)
- TechCrunch Uglified – I think the title speaks for itself on this one
- Business Log’s Critique
- Aaron’s view on the redesign
- Tyme’s reflections – mainly on the ad factor
- Scrivs Shares some thoughts – similar to Tyme’s
I’m sure there’s lots more out there – but as you’ll see there’s some useful discussion going on. I just hope it doesn’t turn into a bitch-fest and that people see this as an opportunity to discuss the principles of good blog design rather than see it as an opportunity to get personal and get into one-upmanship
