CampusByline hints that the Daily Northwestern is sporting a new design for its site. You can view a screencap of the new design below the fold. I do not have a copy of the old design, so I can’t say whether it’s an improvement or not. However, it has a couple of strikes against it, IMHO.
The front page is heavy on text, especially on the first screen (that will hopefully change as they put up more content). Contrast that with the other recent redesign at the Daily Eastern News.
The other thing that’s a little bit puzzling is one of the links in the top nav bar. It reads “Daily Online.” Huh? When I go to the main page on the web, I assume I’m reading the Daily online. Is this supposed to be the place for “web only” content? Then use the term “Web exclusive” or “Online only” or something.
Actually, the Daily Northwestern runs on College Publisher, and the design is pretty familiar to anyone who looks at a lot of CP sites on a regular basis (yours truly). I’m more in favor of ditching the left navigation bar on most sites, as it takes up valuable news space for administrivia (again, the Daily Eastern News put these links in the top nav bar). See the ehcwired.com site for an example of how you can hide all that information in a drop-down menu. I’m not saying it’s a perfect design, but it is another option.
Finally, I really like the effort to put more color into the basic site design, something I noticed last fall in the Iowa State Daily site, and DEN has put some thought into as well.
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