Boring Corp Newspaper

MagicToaster

I'm doing some freelanced work for my old company. The original design was a horrible looking MS Word file that I inherited. I hate that Word file, Word was not made for anything other than writing paragraphs.

I'm about to propose this design to substitute the old one. It's simple, but, that's where my company likes to be. More importantly, however, it's flexible. If I have more news, I can just play around with the squares.

I'm still not sure how you're actually gonna go into the links to read the reports, but I'm working on some alternatives. Maybe, it's gonna be a light box, or maybe it will take you to a different page. Who knows.

In any case, I received some criticism that the sales people couldn't read the Word file on their Blackberry phones, so I made a mobile layout just for them.

What do you guys think?



Mobile


I will leave the title typeface as it is, Museo. But for the body of text, I might change it to a sans serif version of Museo.

Iruka

I like the mobile version better than the other. The line divisions making little sections is more appealing than just under every title, personally. I'd be interested to see it with sans serif body text.

MagicToaster

Ill buy the sans serif version later and review this design.

MagicToaster

I placed the dotted lines in the mobile version as a way to divide the space, but it ended up looking better organized than the main version. I made some changes and now both versions have dotted lines dividing the content. I must say, it looks better organized. I also changed the font to the sans serif version, it is slightly more legible... only slightly.





I was also thinking about how to deal with the navigation, last night I thought of this.



It's light box that will appear in the right side of the page displaying the content of what ever news the user clicked on. This way, I can keep my users in a single page and I can avoid the whole "please put a home button" discussion that I know will ensue.

Iruka

Looks clean and corporate to me!

supabeast

As much as I like Museo that ship has sailed. This looks like a two-year-old web site selling toilet paper.

MagicToaster

supabeast wrote: »

This looks like a two-year-old web site selling toilet paper.

So how would you propose this could be improved?

supabeast

I would start looking at fonts that give it a less generic feel. The problem with Museo is that it’s been used so much that instead of a being a quirky contemporary Dutch typeface it’s just another ubiquitous design like Helvetica. Combine that with the stock photos and it feels really bland. But your strong use of the type combined with that intense green makes this easy to fix. Find a typeface that really speaks for the client’s line of business, location, and history so that employees see the site as an expression of their company, as opposed to any company.

Molybdenum

ubiquitous and so subconscious its damn-near invisible is what every corporation wants to be. I see nothing wrong with museo.

MagicToaster

I respect Supa's opinion, but I don't agree with it. I also see nothing wrong with Museo.

m3nace

Use Jokerman, that shit screams meso-america.

MagicToaster

Jokerman hS its place.... It just so happens to be graphic design hell.

m3nace

It vaz joke, haha funny.
Also, what do you have against meso-america ese?
On a serious note, I don't see anything wrong with museo either. Maybe with the exception of the 'X' in the top right corner. It sticks out compared to every other interface where the "exit-'x'" or whatever it's called is just a plain X without any asymmetry.
edit: I'm referring to the most recent picture.