Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

the change of the contrib guard is bound to come out in blibs and blobs a bit, isn't it, if only because the pundits aren't all run on the same day?

i slightly decoded viner's five points as a step away from clickbait praxis but not holding my breath: i actually like the new look but i think the attendant announcement has been super-feeble

TBH this just results in me putting together a fantasy league team worth of columists I would drop.

weird that they led with rhik samadder on their first front page, isn't he just one their ex-guide clickbait writers?

'praxis' - A.H. Wilson

I don't see much reason to suppose that any columnists are dropped, until it turns out they're dropped?

Unlike others, I don't dislike Jenkins as a writer. In fact simply as a writer of prose he is far better than most of them. I agree with about 50% of what he says, while usually feeling threatened, angered or alarmed by other 50%. I don't think he is a simple 'right-winger'. More a 'classical liberal' or the like.

I once told Alba (of ilx) I thought SJ was a CAVALIER and was very glad that he agreed.

I went out to buy the new Guardian.

There was just one tattered copy left in Marks & Spencer.

No copies left at all in WH Smith.

A Guardian frenzy!

Then I found a deep pile remaining in Sainsbury's.

The paper looks substantial to me, ie: it will take me days to get through it.

Lol.

Do not like the new masthead, social media logos etc.

If only the Guardian read ilxor.com user LBI's opinion on this, this would be reversed in no time, I know I know (it's not that serious)

am i right in thinking they're using an FT-style off white background on the website to denote columnists? could they perhaps change the body text on those pages to the same off-white colour?

You're not wrong, by the looks of it.

the formatting of the new logo on twitter is abysmal but i like the new masthead font

New masthead typeface is horrible, I wasn’t much a gnat of the old one. Eff a serif.

So. I've looked at the website on a number of different devices now, and it definitely looks different on different screens. But isn't it a bit odd that Factual Reporting aka Truth is pristine white, Official Guardian Opinions are a pale pinky colour, and Comment Is Free is kind of... brown?

Did no one think through the visual semiotics of that?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DTqA0HhWAAEXPRo?format=jpg

"Comment Is Free" has always been full of brown

Culture is beige.

I'm not expecting to grow flowers in a desert
But I can live and breathe
And see the sun in wintertime
In a third country dreams stay with you
Like a lover's voice fires the mountainside
Stay alive

Not entirely sure about the white text on black background thing tbh.

https://s10.postimg.org/4i7ba7uhl/Guardian.png

I don't get why the single-G icon (on the app eg) is so different from the masthead G

so that it fits symmetrically into the circular twitter profile badge

but i'm not sure that's worth messing with the first letter of your new logo tbh

yikes - the black and white in the new app is stark

Stark and also very boring

Blacks should be slightly off-black or grey on the web - true black is kinda hard to read

I don't understand why designers don't understand that high contrasts are hard for people (especially older people) to read

everyone seems to be forgetting the blue was extremely shit

i like the new font!

This could work

https://i.imgur.com/AE17Yws.png

from this article btw

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2018/jan/16/shelf-effacement-how-not-to-organise-your-bookshelves

Initial conclusions:

I like the tabloid a lot less than the Berliner. I was very fond of the Berliner and admired much of its design, each time I read the sports pages for instance. I mostly don't admire the new design. I also don't think the tabloid is easier to handle: on the contrary.

The website seems considerably worse to me, partly in how it handles but mainly how it looks.

While there were economic reasons to go tabloid, I don't think there were good aesthetic reasons to change the design. It seems an unforced error.

It all makes me think I will read the Guardian less in future, whether online or in print.

Mind you, it is now 17 years since I wondered whether the Guardian was worse than it used to be.

17!

I'm finding it annoying that some text on the homepage is the same purple colour used as the internet's standard colour for hyperlinks you have already clicked on.

It's the colour that throws me off in general w/ the new site. It's all every unbalanced and (relatively) restless to my eyes, compared with how it was.

I hate all the lines.

I don't understand why designers don't understand that high contrasts are hard for people (especially older people) to read

Some sites (iirc the 2012 Olmypics for example) have in the past offered 'high contrast' stylesheets (white text on black or near black, very strong colours e.g. cyan for links) to actually cater more for greater readability but it's never been easy to judge what works best for who and why here.

The garish star rating on images for reviewed media is bad too. Suggests the star rating isn't important enough to retain the space it had before yet more important than showing all of an image. The bigger problem remains pretty much everything getting three or four stars though so could've been a good opportunity to alter that system and save space. Should've gone with emoji imo.

I also hate the lines - I've had a couple discussions at work about the redesign (part of my job is website UX) and they are all variants on "wtf were they thinking with those lines".

The paper is fine, it's just a little sad and boring, kinda easy to mistake for the Times or Evening Standard. Two quid a day seems... untenable.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/18/elena-ferrante-to-become-guardian-weekends-new-columnist

This is an excellent move, seriously.

"Yet, when Hodgson allows himself a second to contemplate, he can acknowledge some would spy romance in last autumn’s return."

The Guardian's typical omission of the word "that" sometimes makes their sentences temporarily confusing for me.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jan/19/roy-hodgson-interview-crystal-palace-manager

Took me a while to find the guardian this morning - it was hiding with all the other tabloids, not on the broadsheet shelf where it normally is.

Thought the review section looked at but feeble when I picked it out but the smaller size is handy and the paper stock is better.

They've ditched the weekly film recommendations in the TV bit (I think, maybe they've just moved it). That used to be handy.

enjoyed Grace Dent dropping a casual Sylvie Krin-esque mention of her handbag worth the thick end of a grand into her food review today

brands as shorthand or juxtaposition is kind of her thing though, innit. like mentioning Findus Crispy Pancakes at the other end of the spectrum.

Where's Harangue The DJ gone?

new review and feast magazines are nice

fuck sake

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jan/27/stephen-bush-can-i-cook-like-andy-warhol

le sigh

I have bought it 3 times this week.

got a little echo of the opening of Lady Lazarus there

just think how many 10p mixups you could have bought for the cost of those grauniads

the numbers they use for the clues of the everyman crossword in the observer are worse than they used to be

PDF: https://crosswords-static.guim.co.uk/obs.everyman.20180211.pdf

the 4s and 7s especially

Gary Younge is the only reason to read the Graun:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/02/boris-johnson-white-privilege-black-woman

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/11/why-the-lefts-hellish-vision-is-so-ruinous

I mean

jfc

i wanted to pull a bunch of quotes and take the piss but really just fuck him and fuck the comfortable middle class bubble that formed his fucking technocrat "gradualism"

this mediocrity obv slept through the last the 2 UK elections, or just conveniently excised them from his memory. His students are very fucking lucky people.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/mar/08/how-to-retire-early-frugal-spending

the state of fucking this as well.