jtnt://life/unedited

Design By Levitra

Mr. Herasimchuk has redesigned his Design By Fire site, but it still looks like his inspiration came from the Levitra logo. Wink wink.

All joking aside, this redesign is a step backwards from its predecessor. Where am I on this site? Why is everything pushed down so far? Even the logo at the top is a good 150 pixels from the top, but more important all of the navigation is entirely below the fold on my little Pismo Powerbook. It also gives me dreaded horizontal scroll bars. Icky.

Web designers used to get panned for trying to design the web like print. Now, "top" designers are being praised for taking this tack. Andrei himself calls this out as a goal of the redesign, "One of my goals with this redesign was to break away from looking too much like a blog, and more like a dynamic printed publication."

This is possibly a good goal in part, as the majority of print design is much more readable than most web design. However, this redesign misses the mark. If I picked up a print publication that was this hard to "navigate," well, I'd put it down.

I think the Design By Fire redesign should be praised for attempting to forge a new path, but unfortunately the path it forges is going to get all its followers lost in the woods.

Side note: Allow me to point out the huge headlines he uses.