Smashing Magazine has redesigned again, further evolving their visual style rather than throwing away the old completely, but still bringing some new and interesting features into play.
It’s still as ad-heavy as before, but that can be expected. At a glance, the navigational header present in the previous incarnation is bigger and more pronounced, and the search box has been moved there to be more prominent.
The classic “We smash you with the information that will make your life easier. Really,” line has been removed from under the logo. I’m not sure if there is any significance to this other than making things look a little cleaner, but it will be missed.
Now one of the biggest changes in the redesign is the front page. Smashing Mag’s posts aren’t the only ones displayed there now. “What?” you may ask. Let the folks at Smashing explain it for you:
If you’ve already had a look at the new front page, you would have found some changes there, too: not just recent Smashing Magazine posts, but contributions from other design magazines. That’s because we’ve teamed up with 18 other magazines to house a productive and comprehensive meeting place for designers and developers, showcasing truly the best content around. Among those joining the game are Webdesigner Depot, Noupe, SixRevisions, UX Booth, Hongkiat, ThinkVitamin, Web Designer Wall, Designm.ag, Boagworld and Speckyboy. We call it the Smashing Network.
Two posts are shown in traditional blog-format, followed by a grid showing 18 posts aggregated from the network. Clicking on the headline takes you to the originating site.
Network sites also get their own author profile pages that show all of the syndicated posts as well as Twitter postings from the sites’ accounts.
It seems like a good idea to me. It brings more great content into one place for easy access. It’s like–dare I say it?–a web portal. I’m sure some of you are worrying about the RSS feed; don’t worry, the network content goes into a separate feed from the main Smashing one.
Another neat addition is the “Tag Explorer.” It’s certainly a better way to display tags than in a tag cloud.
Go and check it all out for yourself: SmashingMagazine.com.
