New Design is up! Feedback wanted!

I hope this turns into some awesome forum, but to do that everyone needs to be active. Staffers pop in every now and then.. yall are like celebrities. Just say a couple of words and be on your way, everyone's happy. Random offtopicness helps too.

Hello from Mexico! This theme is fantastic.. amazing.. great! Can use this theme for my personal blog with credits to GOMEDIAZINE? Pleaseeeeeeeeee!! Pleaseeeeeeeee!!

You know Jeff that RSS logo has kinda grown on me. I'm liking this theme more and more everytime I visit.

Also like the new continue reading buttons you've got going on.

Any chance of a wordpress theme tutorial in the near future?

The new site raises the level around here... Powerhouse resource.
You all stole my idea about the "Zine" theme though :(
Seriously the direction around here is on the up and up!
Keep cranking out the cool-ness!!

Its great i just would love to have a picture with each article in the archive for easier navigating.

It looks sweet, got to say I was impressed over the new design. The minute I opened up the site something told me, something fishing going on here. Then I noticed it was no other than GoMediaZine. Nice job folks. But I kinda feel it gets lonely when it fades into the darkness, while scrolling down.

Hmmm, Go Media and colorful dots... I'm not sure if it fits or not. Don't get me wrong, it's perfect for a female goth whatever but I imagine Go Media a little more edgier that colorful poke-a-dots. The design is clean as always but not really edgie. Shouldn't that be tattered rags and worms or something?

@James, I agree. That's why I left it unchanged.

I know some mentioned they didn't like the small area for the main body content, however I like this look. Too many sites force peoples eyes to read across too wide of areas and are thus hard to read, some nearly illegible. This narrower space allows for a more appropriate, readable line of type. Nice work.

Dope as always dudes.

True enough but firefox is really catching up on IE, its now about 53% of the web are IE and 41% are on Firefox, plus the rest. Check out the browser stats from w3schools there. Its pretty interesting.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stat...

@Jeff. Did you use alpha png's or gif's for the overlapping? if its png's how did you get around the problem in IE?

I think it's a huge mistake to discount IE. Not because I love it or anything but because it's what most people are using on the internet. Most people are not tech geeks or design savvy -- they just want to find what they are looking for. Also -- I am guessing that we all want paying clients here -- most corporate clients are using IE so we need to comply whether we like it or not. Plus, it's a wonderful challenge trying to get a great design to work in several conflicting situations (browsers).

@kaos

Fair point about the browsers, I'm a little anti IE, mainly out of lasyness so while designing my site I have pretty much alienated myself from anyone on anything below IE7. I amhaving second thoughts about that though.

And for the rest, I can't argue with personal opinion.

Thanks for the reply

@ ChequeredManiac:
You're right - I am using an old, outdated browser.
That being said, I don't see anything here that couldn't be programmed so that it wouldn't show up correct in that particular browser.
I think it's fairly important to keep stuff semi-backwards-compatible.
I remember a bunch of years ago, I used iframes for my site, and the amount of hatemail I got for that, because most browsers back then didn't support it made me rething my whole approach towards the web and design. Since then, I've made most of my stuff so that it works in my ancient browser, thus making sure it works in 99% of the modern ones.
But I guess that's the whole style over substance and effects over story thing again, and let's not dive into that.

Overall, I can see in retrospect that my comments may sound a bit harsh. They're not meant to be. What I do mean is that the new design doesn't really appeal to me personally. I was trying to come up with a little bit of constructive critisism.

What I also really mean is that GoMedia does do some killer stuff from time to time; I don't like it all, but they got the attitude to market themselves as Masters of the (Design-)Universe, so props to them for that. :)

Have a nice summer.

LOVE IT!

That's all I've got to say about it. :)

Hi !
Nice job for the new template ! I really like it but there is one thing that i don't like. It's the underline on hover for the menu...
I think it would be better without that underline :/
Well nice job for the new template and all your work i really like what you guys doing :)

(Sorry for my poor english i'm french :D)

"your simply the best!!tan tan tanntann...!!better than all the rest!tan tan tannntan...!!!"
it´s fantastic(in portuguese: brutal!)!!!

@kaos - Are you kidding? It doesn't resemble verle's blog at all, unless by resemble you mean they are both blogs. But I didn't see any obvious comparison at all.

To those hating on the drop-down menues, I don't think they're bad. It's a fine way to approach that deep navigation problem with zero clicks.

@Joe - the circle pattern is from a sweet searies GoMedia artist Oliver Barrett did that has since been turned into a nice shirt and has been featured on the gomediazine and gomedia.us sites several times. They're not just random, they're a nod to the GoMedia design aesthetic and one of their more "famous" works.

Not a big fan of the circle patterns in the background but otherwise it's sick! Good stuff

I like it a lot. It's simple, easy to navigate and looks fantastic. Nice attention to detail too, with regards to the RSS 3D logo, nice touch :)

Good work guys,

Ross :)

the depth look cool, the grunge with the bright colours - sweet, very fresh! thanks GM for even more inspiration! :K

@kaos

Are you using IE5 or 6, either really it doesn't matter but they are two of the worst browsers for general support of standard protocol on the net., I'm sure Opera or something runs on OS9.
It is your choice of course but I wouldn't be expecting anyone to support a browser that the web community has wished for decades would just explode.

Meh, I don't really like it.

Well... I like parts of it, but what I really dislike is that it doesn't run in my trusty old IE (still using MacOS 9 because OSX runs sucky on my oldass computer, but hey - it still gets the job done!).

I do like the background overlapping thing, but dropdown menus are a passing fade. It's the easy way of doing navigation without giving much thoughts on how it could be accomplished otherwise.

Oh, and what's with the ads?

Actually, and I don't mean to be harsh, this whole thing reminds me of a grungier version of Veerle's blog (veerle.duoh.com).

Sorry guys; I do really love your work and tutorials and overall attitude, but this just doesn't cut it for me...

hi dudes!!! i think the new design is great! i like it very much. but i am not sure about the resolution of the grunge background....that's all!!! keep up the great work!

Very nice, but a bit slow on my end.

Nice work guys!! This design feels much more gomedia-esque! Congratulations!

Nice overhaul of the Fresh News theme...I believe that is the one used here. Anyhow...love it...maybe some Go Media premium themes coming in the future?

Sure, the design is impressive but it's not what's most important. That would be navigation and content, which clearly shows with this layout. The tutorials are much easier to find and I love the drop down menu. Works flawlessly and the styling is very sexy. Colors and graphics of course blow me away as you guys specialize in it. Great work, certainly an improvement, keep it up guys!

-Just a far away admirer.

[thumbs up]

one word!!! Amazing!

Love It, Its a little easier to browse through the site quickly! and it looks great! Although to me the right column looks slightly too big.

The whole thing looks great and I like the way it's organized. The design reflects "gomedia-ness" a lot better than the last design. Overall... two thumbs up!

Ho-ly-crap.

What an amazing design! Really Go MediaZine style, absolutely fascinating.

Keep up the great work people: This design is just one of all your great talents.

Greetings,,

I love the new design and would love to see a tutorial on how you intergrated it into wordpress from start to finish.

Ottimo lavoro, siete sempre tra i più grandi!

Very good!
This site now is REALLY good!

Very nice design... Its your face, I think... you are great... keep the good work.
I have to say that this is my favourite blog for resourses and info about grahics.
thnks for your work.

The new layout is so awesome! Great job Jeff. Its so much more clean and user friendly.

I dig

All I can say is wow!!! I'm thoroughly impressed to say the least. Everything is so much easier to find now, before you had to dig through all the posts to find something you really needed... now it's all categorized and organized efficiently. Kudos to the person who masterminded the useability here- and I'm loving the banner mast. Thanks for all you do for the design community. I look forward to watching you flourish.

Wow, it really is a great design. Great style and such a good balance. Nice work.

The RSS feed link on the freebies page covers up the drop down menus. The new layout is sooooo awesome!

I love it! Very sexy design.

just looking at my last post, any chance you can have custom smileys.
I'm gonna go with the general concensus and say I think more skulls...

ha, that could be a nice little addition though, custom skull smileys, try doing :P on a skull

I abosolutely love this site. It's a great example of using layered PNG files. I own an internet marketing company and I am always struggling with the correct balance between great design and great funtionality. You guys seem to have come pretty darn close!

A couple of things:
*I agree with the general consensus about the RRS icon. HOwever, I suggest you rotate it with another icon design and measure which one gets you the most subscribers. Data doesn't lie! And, often what one intuitively thinks will work is wrong.

*I like the drop-down menus and agree it is probably the best way to offer deeper navigation without cluttering up the screen. I agree, however, about the underlines -- they just aren't right. They seem like an afterthought.

*On the right the first content block that has ads does not load properly in IE7 -- you get one ad in the first line, two ads in the second line and then the 4th ad hangs down into the next content block. I can send you a screenshot if you want one. (looks fine in Firefox).

Over all this design captures the spirit and essence of GoMedia exceptionally well. XOXOXO

Sorry to be gettin all harsh on your many hours work (the RSS button)
And your right, I didn't rally mean it when I said grungey just more weathered, in keeping with the textures you have goin on.

Any chance you could do an in depth wordpress tutorial similar to the drupal one, which was great and very well documented. I'm sick of trying to find tutorials from other sites because all they focus on is the coding, I want image positioning and the like and you seem to have it down. Thanks again for the whole Arsenal/Zine thing. You're so helpful and are a credit to the design community

:)

The introduction of categorization has instantly increased the usability of the blog.

I like the multiple opt-in/out services on post/comment/email very clean and safe.

Not sure about the video block but will wait and see what appears in it.

Very nice Layout, but Background is a littlebit blurred.

Hi all,
Love the new look. However I think you should put "Arsenal" up on your top menu. It's still the place where most eyes will scan first for direction.

cheers
miles

This by far is one of the best design blogs I have ever seen. I mean this is a real WOW. I just SHARTED. keep it up.

Pitty you took the route of wordpress and not drupal, seeing that you have posted a awesome tutorial on it. Would luv to know why you decided to use wordpress rather?

clean site hope it worx's for you.

Awesome header and bg! congrats!

I love the new design. The colors are great.

The only thing I don't like is in the main navigation, your mouseover effect is a weird underline. I would rather see a nice color and text underline or something. The hand-drawn underline just doesn't do it for me.

Great redesign though. Congrats!

New design rocks - especially the RSS icon! it's so fun looking Jeff! ;-)

I'm realizing that the first part of my comment may be the result of my own browser being silly. If it is, disregard that part of my suggestion. >:-d

Everything looks good, but the boxes stacked at the bottom of the page (archives, twitter, recent posts, aresenl promo, etc.) is really a bad place for it. I would much rather see it stacked to the right to make it more easily accessible and seen.

Jeff- As for the RSS Icons, Smashing Magazine has had a few posts with some really cool RSS icon examples. Maybe that would be a good place for some inspiration when the time comes? Just a thought :-d.

As a design stand point it is great! Glad you went with selling the ads instead of the Google ads. Don't get too many ads though. I know you have to earn fundage but once too many ads get put on a site it becomes more like a billboard than a useful site. Other than that it looks awesome. Your guys' and girls' work are amazing.
As for the comment about the person not liking the drop downs. I think they are needed. Drop downs are not good if you only have like 5 pages. If it is a multipage and multifunctional site I think drop downs save tons of space. You what would be sweet is if the drop downs looked like torn paper or broken sheet rock around the edges. Just change out the pngs or gifs. It would give it that distressed look your site and design goes for. Just a thought. It is completely up to you.
Awesome work.

Looks sharp! I like the choice of imagery and the depth it portrays. However, I don't like how you split the grid further down on the homepage into two columns. For me, the content in this area loses relevance/page hierarchy to the elements on the right side. In other words, it gets too busy. Otherwise, job well done!

Hey Gals and Guys,

Site looks sick. Just a suggestion (i love grid based designs) for the smaller headlines (the smaller news content) set a min-height so that they all are the same size. Some are slightly smaller and its throwing of the overall cleanliness of the designer.

Keep up the Keepin'

Chad.

Hey, que tal.

Genial su nuevo skin, muy creativo. Sigan con sus tips que dejan algo muy bueno a todos los que estamos en el diseño grafico.

Saludos desde Monterrey, Mexico.

First off, props for the fresh design, which complements my impression of Go Media way better than the old design did (of course I never thought about that before). It's rather slow on my end (Scandinavia), compared to the old site. That could of course be the hordes of people coming by to lurk, but I just wanted to mention it.

sexy, I love it. this really needed an update!

Just plain love it.
Hi from mexico City.

first impressions of it are really good... i haven't had a chance to really explore it yet though.

regardless thanks for all the great content!

Love the new design! Got that goMEDIA flavor that makes my eyes pulsate with bliss. Very nice! I did notice however, that some of the drop downs tend to look "transparent" on certain pages in the navigation, making it hard to read whats in that drop menu. Other than though, beautiful job! Yet another piece of inspiration bestowed onto the world, thanks goMEDIA.

Thanks everyone, all good suggestions. I'll look into customizing the footer a bit more. Adding some elements from the header.

I really like the textures and the hand-drawn look. Great job!

Sweet! Great Design. Much prettyer than the other design, you guyes are awsome..
peace

Holy crap, it's beautiful! Kudos!

This is my first visit to your site and I'm really impressed by the design. I think the RSS icon is cute, though I agree that it probably doesn't fit in with the rest of the site. I'm going to feature your design on my showcase of customised premium themes this evening.

OMG!!!!!
No Way!!!
I like it very much

The design it's so much better and cool.. The old one was not showing your potential guys.. You are amazing and the site should be the same.. Now it is.. ;)

Just great!

just

freaking

awesome.

I reckon you could do something more with the footer... the header is just so damn good that you expect something (almost as) impressive for the footer.

Awesome design! The right column loads quite late after the all the content in the left has loaded?

I personally feels the sidebar is “overcooked”, but I sincerely like the header =)

Really nice design here! Well coded, nicely done, and I really dig the handful of "look i defy the rules of overlapping elements"-ornaments that overlap the main area :D

Great Design, clean and clear, yet interesting and with a high level of detail - awesome work

Bright colours, unique style, you might add collapsible sidebars as with adblock there is a big wide purple...

@adelle and everyone else hating on the RSS icon - LOL, I spent 5 hours on that damn thing in 3D Studio Max trying to get it perfect and now you want to rip it to shreds! Oh life as a designer...

Anyway, it matches because I say so! Haha, but honestly, give me a few days to become less attached to it and then I'll put something more fitting.

At least people are noticing the RSS Icon. I just hope they're subscribing haha.

Wow guys! The new site looks great. I'm not sure I like the arrangement of the older posts at the bottom though. I'm used to all the other blogs where it goes from newest to older vertically.
Anyhow, I really love the overall flavor.
Peace,
T

great looking design you have here! i absolutely love it, only thing that seems oddly out of place is the way you have designed the rss feed. Doesn't match the rest of your stuff. Other than that- Hot!

Looking good guys, keep up the good work!

@Broox Pulford - we are trying to move away from the logo with a yellow stroke on it. It was never really part of the original logo. It's like putting a stroke on the Nike swoosh. The logo is really just the swoosh - it shouldn't need a stroke on it. Since it doesn't have a stroke - that means it need to be a light color since it's on a black background... so, it was either white or Go Media Yellow. We thought the yellow was too obvious and the white was kind of classy... so there you have it. White logo with no stroke!

Definitely looks killer on my 30" monitor. I certainly agree that it suits the tone of your company a lot more - lots of grungy elements with a sweet polish on top. The smaller logo up top goes a long way, that was my biggest gripe with the old design. It looks way more "content-emphasized" now, with a really nice addition of the arsenal elements that also adds to the illustrative qualities of the company.

And man, those transparent, overlapping PNGs go a long way in proving how effective overlapping can be if it's used correctly. damn.

I don't particularly mind the drop downs, but maybe a darker outline or CSS drop shadow could help separate them a little more - seems to me that the abundance of white up top is what's causing the ruckus.

All in all though this looks killer.

Amazing design guys

Wuau, que cantidad de circulos!!
Obviamente esta mucho mejor que su antecesor, pero insisto... que cantidad de circulos :P

@MattLikeALion - I like your harsh crits. I'll try to work on some of those changes as well as getting the site to validate.

@Grant and everyone else who doesn't like the dropdown menus. I saw no other way with all the categories we have. I consolidated a lot of stuff to simplify it down to just a handful MAIN categories. I think the drop down is fine. On the last site, we had ZERO category navigation in the header.

@ChequeredManiac - Yeah I could probably tone down the gloss on the RSS button. But I wasn't going for a "grunge" theme on the site by any means. But I know what you're getting at. Something I'll consider.

Looking Great!

An absolutely perfected design! Nice with modern standards, yet a hint of Gomedia style.

Great job guys.

I'm not a huge fan of drop down menus. I've always felt that they cover too much screen space and they prevent me from clicking where I want to click sometimes. I like the trendy circles but not sold on the ribbons in the header. The header just seems a bit busy. In all, it a big improvement and I'm looking forward to many new posts.

Damn you go media! I was currently modifying my "Fresh News Theme" on a blog im working on with tentacles at the top like yours!! I like this one better than the old one though.

haha i agree with the comment about that 3D RSS icon. looks waaaaay tacky. i trust your guys' judgement though in that maybe you were just using that in the meantime?

Hey guys I wanna say..wow, wow, wow congrats you did really improve the site I'm glad you did it just a little observation on your navigation bar, I don't think is your style perhaps a css built one or an interactive flash on the left anyway the rest of it is just wonderful.

Excellent work! The 3D RSS icon seems a bit out of place and the Drop Down Menus could use a little more distinction, but overall everything is fantastic.

Really impressive, wow! I love the background, great work :-)

I really dig the new theme, it matches your brand a lot better than the previous theme. My only question is: Why did you decide to go with solid white on the GoMedia logo instead of the usual yellow, black, and white combination?

Nice guys. I agree with the others that its much better as a representation for yourselves.

Myabe some changes:

The menu seems to get a little lost in the post background, I didn't realise some of the links were there until I looked a bit closer, nothing major about that just maybe a different colour
And what is with the big clunky 3d RSS button, I'm sure you guys could grunge it up ar something, it looks way too shiny and out of place.
Other than that loving the new look for my most anticipated RSS subscribtion

Also, the site's html and css doesn't validate, but most of that looks like easy fixes, such as filling out alt tags, etc...

Wow, i didn't even realize a new design was in the works. Great stuff.

btw, the illustrator tutorials page got some issues...

off the chain! love the new design....

Amazing job on the new design guys. I'll link you guys up on my blog about WordPress. Keep up the great work.

Thanks everyone!

@JBird, we have the user showcase to the right. Although it is hard to find time to go into each person's and comment about it. But if you posted there and asked me for some specific questions, I could help you out.

awesome guys!

i would love for you guys to start something that allows us to post our designs and get feedback from you guys. NOT like a total free service from you guys but just some advice here and there.

Pretty sweet, I dig it!

The new design looks cool, I really like it! Great job!
( More vids pls! :) )

Ye I really think it is better than the previous design and like the art at the top.

Looks damn good to me. You guys rock.

I too thought the default avatars are fun and quite appropriate.

As far as the dropdown navigation, I think the hover instructions for what is under each menu item is unnecessary and prevents the user from being able to read the menu after a split second.

Once again Jeff, great job. I like that you used Arsenal elements, as well as parts from Go Media works that are now "famous" in this community. Effective branding through decorative elements!

wow looks really nice guys!

definitely a nice layout. i love the videos. i also like the default avatars haha

Hey guys,

the new MediaZine looks great! It's definitely an improvement over the original design. My only complaint with it is when you hover on the main navigation, the underline is the exact same one for all of them and it doesn't line up well with all of them.

That's just me nitpicking though. haha.

Josh

I really like it. The depth it creates is a great new trend on the web...keep it up guys.

L

I think the design itself is okay but limiting the main content (left) box to 580px just makes everything feel crammed in, especially when the right box is 340px and contains very little. Even changing it to 660px and 260px would make a big difference. Lowering the size of the table padding could be good too, 20px is a lot.

I just find that clean and simple always works best, especially for a blog or any type of site that uses a lot of text. The more room you leave for text, the better, it enables you to use bigger images and fills the page out a lot more.

Nice feel and unique look...I like the tabs drop shadow depth effect...cool. Also the blend of GoMedia vector art incorporated throughout. You guys final answered my requests for video...yeahhh!!! I would like to see some "behind the scenes" or "making of..." special projects or a GoMedia daily/weekly v-blog...other than that I heart the new site.

Can i marry GO MEDIA? , it's amazing!, captures the main escence of gomedia, the OLD design was godd but a little "clean" to belong to a place who is made of many many things, draws, feelings and vectors.

I don't like the dropdowns menus, they are too BOXED, take another direction with that.

¡Congratulations, GoMedia GO further to anyone expectations!

I think it looks great! I really like how the background images add depth by overlapping the content boxes.

I like the new look. The feel of the site is more your style. There is one problem... it needs more SKULLS! LOL

@Kaiserlino - We're working on the video sizes right now. Thanks!

I just have to say it's awesome.
Just what i think should stay better is in the frontpage where appears the post excerpts, should be all the same size, so they would fit.
Except for that, there is also a little bug on the videos...Some of the use the width they appear on youtube and not the sidebar dimension.

Awesome and keep going

I like it.
I think it captures the GoMedia spirit better than the old design. Dark but colorful. Personaly I don't realy like the dropdown navigation though.