For those who haven’t seen, the Bostonist, spinoff of Gothamist is up and running. There are still a few kinks to iron out (trackback URLs that read chicagoist.com) and sometimes I feel that the writers don’t know Boston all that well. But misgivings I might have succumb to the success of the site itself. This is lifestyle reporting that the Weekly Dig, the Boston Phoenix, and even the boston.com site should be doing, but somehow don’t. Why not update the Go! Column or 8 Days a Week throughout the day? Why can’t the others effect a tone excited by the offerings of urban life without seeming unbearably self-consciously hip? I’m wondering if sites like the Bostonist will push these outlets to have better online coverage and commentary.
But the new site got me thinking: why are the Phoenix and boston.com sites so poorly designed? It’s not for lack of trying. It’s like they’re designed after the late-90s ideal of a web portal that controls the reader’s media consumption and fills the design with as much advertising and marketing tie-ins as possible. The Bostonist is no great shakes and is no better designed than your run of the mill template-based weblog. But its weblog format does have the virtue of keeping the layout simple, with white space to make it easy on the reader’s eye. The Globe has professional designers at their finger tips — could they put less emphasis on Flash modules and more on clean design? Especially since they already differentiate boston.com, A&E, and the Boston Globe pages.
Meanwhile, I’ve been observing the brand differentiation of the local TV news broadcasts. CBS4 has rebranded themselves along the lines of WHDH-7’s hyper-produced look, while drawing a "harder" edge that frankly comes across as ridiculous. Both 4 and 7 strike me as too busy. I’d prefer the dowdy traditional format of WCVB-5 as an alternative, but such underdesigning is on its way out (though 5 still has the highest ratings, I believe), and in any case their graphics are cheesy and cliche-ridden as well. But the best design is by far FOX-25’s newscast. Simple, geographic bars… clean sans-serif font… spare studio construction… it feels like the overall look was planned and designed by someone who cares about graphic design instead of by the resident video effects editor. Perhaps another station could take a similar approach, only without the right-wing politics?
No comments have been added to this post yet.