Ryan Bowman, the designer behind last year’s relaunch of the Financial Times, has cast a critical eye over this week’s redesign of the Independent web site.
“To my eye, it seems like a unsuccessful stew of the biggest news sites in the market–the menu from the Times, the blue headline color from the NY Times, the beige lines from the Guardian and so on and so on,” Bowman writes on the blog of Shakeup Media, the consultancy where he works with former Express editor Richard Addis.
“Websites aren’t all about features and bells and whistles, they need the same sort of analytical design and editorial thinking as newspapers. The page needs to be abundantly clear, completely decipherable in one glance. The new Independent site design is a jumble.”
Bowman’s post shows what he would have done with the Independent’s web site instead of following Independnet News & Media’s approach of adapting existing templates from the Irish Independent.
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