*Please pardon the un-styled mess why I am rethinking and re-designing my blog!*
The New York Times is quite possibly the worlds most famous newspaper. The NYT website has an Alexa ranking of 101, an average visit time of 4.6 minutes and has over 100,000 websites linking back to its content. They must be doing something right! I read the NYT (website) on a regular basis, but until now I never stopped to think about what exactly pulls me in about the design of this site.
Haven’t heard of Khoi Vinh? Proceed directly to subtraction.com and block out a few hours of your schedule. You will engrossed in his blog. Khoi Vinh is the design director for the in-house team at the New York Times. Khoi is the guy in charge of the NYT website. His clean design style is evident in the design of the site.
6 column grid structure of the NYT website
The NYT website is extremely well organized – which is probably an understatement. The design is based on a 6 column grid. Everything just feels so nice, and in its rightful place. Grids impart a sense of structure and order to a website.
To me, using grids is very much like alphabetizing things… sooner or later, you realize that the alphabet is an incredibly useful organizing principle. So there was a certain amount of inevitability to it.
Hierarchy is one of the most important elements in newspaper design. When I squint my eyes at the NYT website the hierarchy is still evident. The website does an excellent job of differentiating headlines by weight, size and color.
I will NEVER get tired of this. I do this all the time in my designs, and I just think its such a nice easy touch to add depth and break out of the ‘box’ of web design. These titles and simple illustrations ad hierarchy and focus to the pages titles and headines.
Not a design element, but I think that the technology (read: nerd) section of the site is very good. This is probably what I read most (besides scanning the headlines). The NYT covers a huge variety of topics on a daily basis – so there’s something in there for everyone.
What newspaper websites or online publications do you read? Any out there that have amazing design? Leave a comment and let me know!
[12] Comments
Posted in design, design websites, Graphic Design, illustration, Web 2.OH, Web Design
[...] 4 Reasons Why I Love The New York Times Website (tags: usability webdesign) [...]
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J says:
I agree. It seems that with all the financial problems print media is having these days, they overwhelmingly have taken the lead with good, clear, well designed, CSS, online content. Why buy the printed paper?I guess I see the problem…
April 8th, 2009 at 5:49 am
Yana says:
It seems like an almost insurmountable task to organize that much information that effectively and beautifully. It’s inspirational! And intimidating…
April 8th, 2009 at 7:38 am
Aaron Irizarry says:
Nice write-up Niki… really enjoyed it. Thanks for the link to Khoi’s blog. I have a feeling I will be spending a lot of time there.
Aaron I
April 8th, 2009 at 8:30 am
Benek says:
It’s not bad, but overall I have to say it’s just got WAY to much going on. Everything feels cramped. Not enough padding/margins between columns and elements. Great typography, hierarchy, and organization can’t overcome that much claustrophobia.
April 9th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Daniel Groves says:
Looks cool, infact I really do like it. Off to look @ subtraction.com now
April 10th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Gasón says:
I don´t read much “traditional” newspapers but I think http://www.lanacion.com.ar has a nice and clean website too…
April 12th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Ahmed Obaid says:
i’ve been searching around for a good/easy way to keep up with daily news on various categories.
NYT is good, but i don’t like their videos/pics slide shows, although this isn’t a critical point but when you don’t like something in a web page it drops a point from your estimation.
i like the way bbc updates it’s content and sometimes i’m not as fast as they are.
so i think NYT is the second newspaper for me after bbc.
April 28th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
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