We’ve published quite a few scoops over the last few months namely the release of Laaik and Play from 24, the Nudjit launch and now leaked screen shots of the much anticipated and documented M&G redesign.
OK, so maybe the screens weren’t leaked but actually graciously sent to me by the head strategist of M&G and Amatomu co-founder Vincent Maher. I caught up with him on Skype and he gave me the low down on their latest project –
The screen shots below is straight after their first internal review attended by Vince Maher, Matthew Buckland, Riaan (M&G editor) and Matthew (the news editor). The goal was to bed down the style and the grid of the homepage which is about 50% done. The way they setup their homepage mock up is exactly what it would look like online with real content, the exact type size, face and line height. The next step was to print and review as a team (team mentioned above). Then they navigated the same mock up in a browser to check the vertical units have their own visual logic in the loading view.
Vincent Maher: Ideally we want people to stop scrolling at logical points and what they see is something that makes sense on its own. Or, if they don’t, there must be enough visual markers to understand that they have stopped between blocks..
Some of the other notable changes are –
- Horizontal navigation
- Wide format 96opx wide, centered
- Essentially four columns decreasing in width towards the right
- Colour – we’re dropping the red and black links because its hard to read
- Blurbs shortened from 5o to about 17 words
Tomorrow is the second round of meetings and then Vince and his team start work on the sections and story pages. Screen shots below –
Pics of the M&G brains trust working on the design
Remember you saw it here first!
