Openpandora Website

[hotblack]

QUOTE
Good design is more than using trendy colors and big headers

I totally agree and don't think anyone's ever implied it was, quite the opposite. The point is you don't have to abandon looking good because of a desire to work well. Form and function are both important, you can appeal to the core target audience without deliberately alienating others. It's what the most successful tech products from a wealth of companies do, not just Apple

QUOTE
Don't forget OpenPandora is a business that uses community feedback. I don't think that is quite the same as a community project.

Fair point.
s/community project/business/
s/members/customers/
I think the sentence quoted makes at least as much sense with those subtle changes. Possibly more if you're a businessman and want to make money. I don't think the team behind this are in it just to make money though and community is clearly very important hence my original use of words.

QUOTE
But how is the OpenPandora / high page rank going to achieve that? I think more people are likely to find out about it from good / regular appearances on other sites - like Engadget.

SEO isn't just about picking keywords though, it includes links to and from other sites, so I think the question answers itself. Good organisation of information is useful for web-crawlers and indexing as well as real users.

I don't think anyone wants to alienate a target audience, I don't think anyone (including the OP) is saying the mock up is the final design or itself is perfect. But there's someone here who is offering some skills that they have to help the project. If they can work with the team and/or the community then that should IMHO be encouraged.

 

[TaG]

Hey andymangold,

I do think openpandora.org needs a redesign, the multiple text boxes broken up with slightly different shading just looks tacky to me. I'm liking your design. A few points to consider:

1) What is your motivation is behind the dark bg coloring? It looks a bit cold to me.
2) I actually prefer your logo to the current one, it's cleaner. Have you tried using an extended typeface and increasing the line weights a little?
3) Not convinced about the italic serif type next to the pandora mockup, why not keep your sans serif and change the formatting of it to make it stand out

Good luck with that, I was always hoping a fantastic designer would magically appear and make a great looking website and logo for the pandora - it deserves it. I had a quick go at a logo myself (not that I think I'm fantastic or anything). If you wanted that original logo I could probably trace it out and send you an AI file, but you're probably more than capable of doing that yourself.


As I have said before, Open Pandora is a business. The logo is their logo. You should not just assume the owners of that business were sitting there waiting for somebody to kindly redesign it for them.

Now if the owners were "hoping a fantastic designer would magically appear" that would be different.

edit:

QUOTE
But how is the OpenPandora / high page rank going to achieve that? I think more people are likely to find out about it from good / regular appearances on other sites - like Engadget.

SEO isn't just about picking keywords though, it includes links to and from other sites, so I think the question answers itself. Good organisation of information is useful for web-crawlers and indexing as well as real usersI understand that. But my points were that the devs don't spend a lot of time carefully picking their words to aid SEO. So one of the other elementary SEO techniques is keywords, which you also want to place in your content. So what would the keywords be to drive traffic?

Links to other sites don't count for much, and inward links are supposedly less important nowadays, unless they came from quality links - which is why getting publicity on other sites is more likely to generate the appropriate links and traffic. Good organisation of words that aren't carefully chosen is a dubious technique. Carefully chosen words at the top of the page would get better results. Hence my question : which words would need to be carefully chosen to drive the appropriate traffic?

 

[hotblack]

QUOTE
As I have said before, Open Pandora is a business. The logo is their logo. You should not just assume the owners of that business were sitting there waiting for somebody to kindly redesign it for them.


Relax. It's a mock up and furthermore the reasons for the placeholder have been explained. I'm sure nobody is going to get sued.

 

[quartercast]

As I have said before, Open Pandora is a business. The logo is their logo. You should not just assume the owners of that business were sitting there waiting for somebody to kindly redesign it for them.

Of course that is the case, the onus is on the designer to put a really good argument behind why their design is better and let the developers choose whether to adopt their design or not.

 

[atomicthumbs]

With Google, SEO is easy enough. All you've got to do is link to the Pandora's web page whenever you mention it.

 

[Esn]

I somewhat agree with Spirit. Andymangold's design is good as web designs go, and I wouldn't mind if it were used. But I think there's nothing too wrong with the current one and there are some things about it that I prefer. For one, it is more unique and feels more genuine. Andymangold says that the current Pandora site exudes an "old 2.0 aesthetic", but I think that his site mockup is more generic because it's more similar to what is now the norm in terms of website design.

A few things that I like more about the current Pandora site:
-The colour scheme. Easy on the eyes and friendly.
-The tabs on the top. Capital letters, more noticeable and attention-drawing. After all, the forums and the blog are important things, not something to be humble about (which is what lowercase letters are used for). What's with this new fad with lowercase letters everywhere? That's Apple's trick, stop copying Apple already...
-Choice of several pictures on the front page

A few things that I like in andymangold's design:
-The picture on top focuses on the keyboard and controls, so the viewer immediately sees the most unique aspect of Pandora's design
-"Pandora in the Press" is on another page. I think this is probably for the best.

 

[funtasticguy]

I personally like the design from andymangold. It looks more professional as well as visually appealing and inviting. Why not take it for a vote and let the community decide what they like best?

 

[butscharoni]

I like the current design well enough. However, I would agree that the deisgn is not very good. It looks nice, but the lack of updates and the structural presentation makes it really hard for someone new here to get what is going on. That said, if you do not see all sides of the project, it is bad advertising.
Linking to a wiki and a forum just does not cut it, because someone new to a project is not interested in wading through hundreds of most often outdated forum posts or wiki articles.

 

[ashdjones]

I like the current design better and i'm involved with web development/design too.

Andymangold has done a good job, but it feels way too generic! Maybe he could tweak the existing template instead? I would love that.

B)

 

[cowai]

The mockup looks more professional and tidy. Sleek and clean. Easy and understand-able.

Since most of pandoras marketing will happen on teh internetz, we need to make the site as perfect as possible.
Web design and content is REALLY important and it's the one thing we can improve, I believe.

- When we got the people, got the resources, WHY NOT?

Please.

 

[grif]

The mockup looks more professional and tidy. Sleek and clean. Easy and understand-able.

Since most of pandoras marketing will happen on teh internetz, we need to make the site as perfect as possible.
Web design and content is REALLY important and it's the one thing we can improve, I believe.

- When we got the people, got the resources, WHY NOT?

Please.

some people just dont like change =/.

I am not to fussed about design, both designs are good... but data management could be much improved.

People finding the project for the first time dont want to struggle through lots of pages of forum topics and wiki articles just to find a little bit of information, they want it right there infront of them.

 

[cowai]

I think:

A better looking website equals More sales.


aka More Win.

 

[PoisonedV]

I think:

A better looking website equals More sales.

which equals more games, more players, and more money

 

[Kyo]

I like your design, but that's not the pandora's logo.

yeah, seriously, what is up with people always trying to change the logo?
i think some people took the "community handheld" aspect too far


I know, right? This is the what, 15th person to do this?

I think:

A better looking website equals More sales.

which equals more games, more players, and more money

Which equals more sales

Which equals potential interest by commercial games

which equals more sales

 

[Yrx]

I like this new design. The old website is a pain to navigate sometimes. Everything is just kind of clumped together. What I like about the new idea is its simplicity, and how easy it is to find information just on the front page.

 

[cowai]

I would go for 'moare win'. Seriously.

 

[grif]

There isn't much harm in trying to be honest.

you could always just ask for feedback on the new site layout.

 

[Arialia]

I somewhat agree with Spirit. Andymangold's design is good as web designs go, and I wouldn't mind if it were used. But I think there's nothing too wrong with the current one and there are some things about it that I prefer. For one, it is more unique and feels more genuine. Andymangold says that the current Pandora site exudes an "old 2.0 aesthetic", but I think that his site mockup is more generic because it's more similar to what is now the norm in terms of website design.

A few things that I like more about the current Pandora site:
-The colour scheme. Easy on the eyes and friendly.
-The tabs on the top. Capital letters, more noticeable and attention-drawing. After all, the forums and the blog are important things, not something to be humble about (which is what lowercase letters are used for). What's with this new fad with lowercase letters everywhere? That's Apple's trick, stop copying Apple already...
-Choice of several pictures on the front page

A few things that I like in andymangold's design:
-The picture on top focuses on the keyboard and controls, so the viewer immediately sees the most unique aspect of Pandora's design
-"Pandora in the Press" is on another page. I think this is probably for the best.

+1 Esn , agree with you
i dislike dark background too difficult to read

for me perfect design is like : www.framasoft.net

http://www.csszengarden.com/ Very beautiful
like this too : http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/208/208.css&page=0 (yes i'm a girl, i dislike pink usually but this ... waouh ! )

the only thing i dislike in actual site is it has no information about resellers
and last 10 posts on forum will be great

 

[grif]

http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/208/208.css&page=0

i very much like, nice and clean. only thing is it looks girly.... and im not a girl.

lol, i think we see a problem there.

 

[cb88]

uuurrhm.... isn't that the whole point of css? that you can change the theme of the page easily withougt messing with the content?