Brand New is Brand New

When we launched Brand New back in October 2006 I have to admit that I haphazardly put the blog together. I wanted to do it quick and painless, not knowing or assuming that it would become our flagship blog. 30 months, 420-plus posts and 25,000-plus comments later, it was time to give Brand New a relative taste of its own medicine and we decided to redesign it. Following are the improvements we made.

Design
Nothing major here. The layout is basically the same size and the elements remain constant. We ditched the bright blue in favor of black and gray, because it would sometimes compete with the logos. The Brand New logo is a little smaller. We have introduced the sans serif companion, Apex New, to the logo’s Apex Serif.

Hierarchy
We’ve made some visual adjustments to make the post themselves a bit clearer, with the author’s name right above the title of the post, and new styles to clearly define quotes and captions.

Title Link
A lot of people have asked us to turn the title of the posts into a link for the post, which is common practice, but we hadn’t implemented it before, so there you have it.

Voting!
Months ago when we had the discussion about comment etiquette, one of the things that kept coming up was some of sort of quick release of opinion through a voting mechanism. So with our limited technological know-how of complex things like voting mechanisms, we came up with a simple add-on to each post where you can quickly vote as well as see the results by totals and percentage. Every post from now on will have the voting; for the most part you will always have the option to vote on concept and execution separately, and every now and then we will throw in a third question that is more specific to the post. We hope this adds a fun layer to the Brand New experience and encourage you to vote whether you are commenting or not.

Threaded Commenting
This is the biggest change and one that we will be testing for some days to see how everyone likes it. This new commenting system is powered by Movable Type’s TypePad Connect which allows for a little more interactivity between comments and also more personalization for those that want it. You can sign in to comment on Brand New through TypePad with any of the following sign-ups: A TypePad account (free, of course), an existing Facebook account, a Google account, and a few other options. No Twitter yet, so hopefully in an upcoming update to TypePad. Or you don’t even need to have an account, you can just comment without registering.

One of the limitations of TypePad Connect is that you can only see 100 comments at a time, with a “Click here to see the rest of the comments” link at the bottom of the thread; since we regularly reach 100 comments we will see how this feels. Do let us know what you think.

Feedback
If you see anything wonky or some other modest change you would like to see, feel more than welcome to comment on it.

Thanks
A special thanks to Anil Dash and his team at MovableType for helping us set up TypePad Connect and modify it to fit our readers’ habits. And, of course, thanks to everyone for your continued support and readership.

The CEO’s comment is:

You made the logo smaller? I don’t understand.

On Jul.27.2009 at 02:56 PM

James John Malcolm’s comment is:

So where do you click to actually cast your vote?

Like the dots, same grid as underconsideration.com I see, title click good, dunno about only having 2 colours (my own sites are like that, you’re supposed to be better!).

On Jul.27.2009 at 03:56 PM

Rob O.’s comment is:

The updated design is very clean, sure, but seems perhaps just a little dry as well. I miss the splash of color. But I do like the voting system. And of course, the content is the real reason I come here…

On Jul.27.2009 at 03:57 PM

Lasse Brandt’s comment is:

Ahrem .. I think somebody made a wrong turn somewhere - you have 2 doctypes, 2 html and 2 head elements - try View Source :)

The design is great btw. :)

On Jul.27.2009 at 04:07 PM

Gonzalo’s comment is:

Déjà vu

On Jul.27.2009 at 04:11 PM

Armin’s comment is:

> you have 2 doctypes, 2 html and 2 head

Ah, snap, thought I had taken care of that. Thanks.

> So where do you click to actually cast your vote?

At the end of most posts, right before the comments.

On Jul.27.2009 at 04:32 PM

swimtwobirds’s comment is:

dots get very shimmery when scrolling, tad distracting..

On Aug.01.2009 at 03:53 PM

Dries’s comment is:

Very awesome

On Sep.01.2009 at 07:53 AM

Adam Haase’s comment is:

There are 2 things this tremendously awesome site needs.

1, Revamp it as a whole like a full blown renovation of a house or a school instead of tweaks like you’re getting a new bed or couch if you get the drift.

2, Instead of one or two posts per day, how about consistently showing us like 6 or 7 posts per day or 30-35 per week?

On Jan.19.2010 at 07:01 PM