New design for wmmna

Hi Regine,

I think the new design is fantastic!!! What a nice surprise to wake up to this morning. I've also enjoyed your shift in content, finding myself more often downloading the videos and images you link to, storing them into my slowly-growing archive. Your site/blog has become essential to my own research and is helping me make my way through my MFA program.

I wish you all the best,
Justin

Great design, Régine! I like the innovative use of images for teasers and the search bar/title bar is fantastic.

It seems to me that the endless blog page is undergoing some rethinking right now. Is this a consequence of so many of our hits coming via RSS that we now have to offer a different kind of experience on the blog?

Certainly I can't claim originality, but I had a similar impulse to rethink and redesign at the start of the year: http://varnelis.net/blog/in_with_the_new

Hi Regime! Really a great Design! Congratulations to your great TV Report on "Neues - das Computermagazin" on 3 Sat / Germany. I visit it over ITunes on the Apple with my IMac. Blogging makes real fun - and your blog is great. Many Greetings from Germany, Peter

Hi, I am a huge fan of your blog for as long as I can think, a truly inspirational and inspiring place.
With the new design, opening your site is a visual feast, like the sun rise in the morning :-)

I love the new site design. I've been a fan for quite along time. Keep on keeping on.

Content is good as usual, i probably need to get used to the new layout. I don't really like color grey as background.

Hi Kazys, i agree with you with the blog format being a bit out of breath. most of my readers check the stories via RSS and i realize that nothing in the design of a blog can change that. the other thing that works not well for me is the comment. many readers would rather send me their comments by email, even if there is nothing personal in it. what motivated the new design though was the fact that i was not satisfied with the "last post on top" model, i wanted something more like the bbc news website or the first page of a newspaper.

Hi Peter,
i've heard that there was that 3Sat tv thing recently but still haven't seen it. they made it a couple of years ago so i don't want to think about what i might have blabbered about at the time. sigh! still, i'm happy to learn that i might fish it out somewhere online,

oh! and thanks everyone for the encouraging words. none of the design is my doing but max will be delighted to get some feedback (positive or not) about it,

great idea the search box in title

it is great how you introduced overlay of photo and text as a good visual teaser but also place with useful information... simple and beautiful..

search bar moment is great..

search results page has annoying css where on mouse over changes the size of the text so the page starts to move... very annoying... the same css is under 'somehow related'..

i'm subscribed on rss feed and came here just coz you mentioned in post that there is a new design.. it is cool but i still prefer rss feed in google reader ;) so i'm very interested how this design will be implemented in rss feeds..

that shouldn't be a big deal... i just realized that this post didn't have any photos so that's probably why i didn't have any in my reader ;)

kee pup the goo dwo rkz

Yeah, I love the new design also! Great look, nice way to hit 2008!

I was missing a "header", but I looooove the searchbar !

I guess it might take some time to get used to the homepage... it looks great, but I'm still a bit confused. It's an interesting move, nonetheless.

I'd suggest that the individual articles (like this page) have a white background - as the articles teasers on the homepage. I think it would look more consistent, and make the text stand out a bit more.

brilliant, soothes the retina and braincells simultaneously! :-D

(and if I can have my two critical cents) ...I think the new format makes a lot of sense in that it encourages Serendipity and eases new visitors in without making them trawl though previous page after previous page to get the gist of what the site is about.

Hi Regine,
it was quite a funny situation, 'cause i was talking about blogs and web design with a colleague of mine, and showing him some good examples (at least from my humble point of view...). So, when i went to your blog i was ehm... disoriented eh eh...

I like it, but as for any things just changed you need a little to feel again 'at home', because your eyes and your hand were used to go together in certain places on the page and so on...

I share with you the need to 'try something different' from the classic long page with all the posts in a row, but i'm a 'traditionalist', and while i read many blogs thru rss readers, and for that reason i more and more often visit single post pages rather than blogs' homepages, there are some blogs, like yours, i prefer to visit starting from its main entrance.

And not having 'enough text' in the homepage is a bit annoying, you aren't immediately into the action, but you need to click again to 'enter' into a post, then came back again, then click into another post again... it's like the difference from walking along a huge corridor with many doors opened and look thru, and moving floor by floor with an elevator...

But i understand that in the last year you almost changed the average length of your 'articles' and the embedded images, so definitively the blog format became a bit 'small'.

You say the 'last post on top' approach don't satisfy you, but it's still a strong metaphor and an easy way to understand the flow of things.

It could be nice (and helpful, at least to me) to have right below the top left of the page, something like a next prev buttons,

By Regine
on January 4, 2008 8:43 AM
prev ----------------- next

and repeating them at the end of the post

to allow a timeline browsing of the posts.

I'm trying to find the time, while still working at ismb in turin, to bootstrap my own blog, now it's almost empty but the structure his quite stable, just need some months to accumulate enough content to look 'real' (anyway, much more conservative eh eh...) any suggestions for a 'rookie'?

Hoping to see you soon in Turin, maybe for TDWC2008... bye!

PS: how better is MT4 than WP2.3.2 ?

just another compliment... loving the new design!

Hola :)

I find it's a great design, I always liked a lot simple things, it's very pleasing.

Also the not-pure-white background color makes a very nice contrast with the text, and my eyes thank you (and Max and Shantia) for that (even though I read wmmna through the feed).

What I miss A LOT is: more visible links to "Bring me home". It was difficult to find the one on this article to see how the front page looked like, then the one on the archives page is waaaay too down the page (I thought there was none until I used the browser text search), and then there is none at all on the search pages (I even tried to search for "home" on the searchbox to see if it worked like a commandline or something XD).

Hi, congrats, you took a great jump :-) I must say that i did enjoy the old format better. Like you said it feels more of a magazine, colors and grid, what I enjoyed was the intimacy of your blog. I have watch your blog grow throughout the years, changing it's form and I wish you'll keep on the wonderful job your doing. (great new year)

Looks great, I love the search box.
I, for one, applaud the tendency towards highlighting longer posts and a "magazine" format. It gives you more space to explore the context surrounding the things you write about.

Hola Miss Regine!
Esta super el nuevo site!
felicidades! Mucha suerte y viva la plata no el arte :) he.

very coolish design… like the navigation… now it's oriented more to readers which are not so blogger-stuff kinda… but portal oriented, that’s ok; but you will obviously stay on ‘your track’ which is the thing you do best…

it’s not about being so modest, you know… by thinking if it’s too big or not… your readers are mostly from digital galaxies, but you are kickin’ asses to ‘art&cultural’ establishment >> which is amazing…
shaking them down… even, you know, snobbism is something that is very often a characteristic of wannabe ‘underground’ players too (underground?! Is that something that exists anymore?!:))))

you are becoming very very good editor because you don’t care about it…
if I would have a publishing agency you would be my first editor, cause you use passion, brain and intuition…

stay cool and stay navigated by yourself…

Hi Regina!

You have finished very hard design concept as vertical blocs. All modules functions and photo galleries have quite simple views, so it's relax to surf in.

But, wmmna'a last dotted header belongs to the site because of the proportion of general perspective. Do you want to add a different header with different colors to make this site appearance more ...... . Fill in the blank, I can not find the right adjective. Solid, sedateness or dense?

Wow! that was a bit of a surprise - your wonderful site is my homepage. I had a split second of fear that you had been taken over, but thank heavens no..... It takes a moment to get used to the navigation but the design is really nice and very clear.
- congratulations!

love the site by the way

all the best

regine i love it greetings from colombia happy new year hope you come back soon

Dany

new design = rocks
media art ignoring contemporary art is stupid, i think you have very good taste and keep it up

chulo

:)

New design is always good. It makes you look at things differently. Read and explore different articles. Very nice. And you are so right to keep on mixing painting with processing and not to keep 'media art' apart from 'traditional' art. That's what makes your site so different.

I think the redesign is great! You've got the taxonomy and tagging completely under control now, it was getting a bit loose (and was relatively sidelined) in the old scheme. Now it is efficiently plunked into the UI alongside the start of every post. Very usable and intuitive!

I dig the "related content" block as well.. I'm trying to figure out a similar feature for my blog.

You should award your designer with lots of great coffee. :)

regine, my friends and i had a discussion about the site's inclusion of contemporary art with the subject matters of media art and design. our question to you is, was the site originally meant to be about design thus named: we make money not art implying that design makes money and art does not or was it meant to meant to be ironical (since art is so profitable these days)? another argument could be made about media art (since media art doesn't really make much money) then is we make money not art a ironic statement about media art's profit-less-ness?

Thanks again everyone. i've just listed everyone's comment and will forward them to max so that he can have a look and decide whether he can do something to make everyone happier with the "design experience." might take a while though. i suspect he is fed up with spending sleepless nights on the blog these days.

Anyway, Mario,
i'm sorry about the confusion i created for you. I just couldn't cope anymore with the usual blog design because -as you noted- my entries were so long and the images so big that we had to scroll down and scroll down before they could read what the next post was. as i wrote i was starting to see my blog as a magazine and i wanted its design to reflect that while being aware that most readers will actually never get to see the design because they follow the blog only through the feeds. Which brings me to the second point: i'm extremely vain when it comes to my blog. I want it pretty, even if only a minority of my readers sees it. i think it's because i tend to identify a lot with the blog. its not just a diary or a repository of my thoughts but it's a part of me, which sounds cheesy but i can't think of a better way to phrase it. Your button suggestion is precious though. and as far as MT vs WP is concerned, i can't see how anything could beat WP.

Hola Daniel,
aaargh! i dream and dream of going back to colombia!

Hey Greg,

i prepare the coffee for my designer every morning. he's my boyfriend! i'll ask him to send you info on how to make the related content block on your blog.

Hi jiacong yan,

ha! why is my blog called that way? i think i had to answer this question 200000 times at least. it has nothing to do with design vs art and making money. some artists make a lot of money and some designers don't so what's the point of separating them on that ground? plus, my blog is not so much about design but creativity which i see mostly in art and a bit in design. so why was it called that way? the story is so long you probably don't want to read it,

best,

r

Good redesign, more progressive!
Now it doesn't own a "traditional" blog layout.
Some things could still be improved, but i like a lot the moving images.

I'm a long date reader of wmmna. I dislike a lot the last layout.
At the point of stop reading! I don't like long entries. Big eye-catching pictures first and a small text are the best formula.
I'm so glad to see a new design!
But isn't good as the 2004-2005 layout. I can't see all images in a post!
I read your blog looking for inspiration.
I like to scroll down, see a picture, say "hmmm, what is that?" and read the text. It's too fast.
At the first impression, the new design it's better!

Media art vs Contemporary Art:
I'm from Brazil. I have a friend that was studying art, but she give ups because every day fights with her teachers. There are a lot of prejudice in the colleges.

(Sorry for my bad English!)

Visually exciting, dynamic and rich. Cool.

Where is all the stuff?

Navigation seems more like random selection.

I don't like the new design.

Sorry

I'm still learning my way around, but I enjoy the new design very much. I'd like it if there were more pictures of Regine (not, you know, all MySpace'd out, just a couple stills, you know).

Hey regine, another compliment for the blog, the new design is fantastic. Been reading for almost a year now, and it's always a great source for inspiration - the world of media art is very exciting indeed. Thx muchly!

I am mostly reading the feed and just discovered the new design. I like it a lot! Nice. cya ARAM