Coldblackice
New Member
I've been MIA for a while, but the first thing that's struck me with the new layout is the difficulty in reading the forums because of a number of design factors, least of which is everything essentially being the same "color".
From a design perspective, visualized boundaries and borders separating threads aren't well defined. The alternating sizes of fonts (multiple per thread listing), all in very close proximity to each other, stacked vertically on multiple lines (and aren't aligning well horizontally), and then above all, to have nearly everything void of color except for a few shades of gray -- it makes for a visually confusing and chaotic layout, IMHO.
A key principle of design is understanding that the eye/mind like to both group things together visually, and seek for patterns. Currently, the design makes it difficult to do either of those, forcing the eye to "stutter" disjointedly, being unable to find clear, orderly, repeating patterns and divisions.
I understand most people probably won't "see" any of this without having some experience or background in design, but nevertheless, I do think that a couple suggestions and tweaks of design would help the entire forum, one and all, whether such would be consciously recognized or not.
If I can make a few suggestions --
1.) At the very least, I would add a bit more color to the scheme for better visual separation between threads/boundaries/lines. Currently, the shades of gray are too similar and subtle to very clearly differentiate between what's what.
2.) In tangent to adding color, I would stretch the page layout out wider so that thread titles aren't stacking two lines up per thread. Currently in the Junkyard, nearly half the page's threads have titles spilling onto two lines. The multi-lined titles are adding a lot of visual chaos to the page, making it cluttered and further harder to to "flow".
3.) Remove the RPF logo from each thread line. It's adding a lot of clutter to the page aesthetics, particularly because each logo is adding ~5 extra horizontal "lines", visually. Additionally, those logo "lines" aren't aligning with the respective text lines of the thread (title, user, time), thus adding more visual dissonance.
At the very least, if the per-thread logo must be kept, I'd suggest putting a solid border line around each logo, to stem a bit of the visual disjointedness. Perhaps even better would be to replace each thread-line's RPF logo with the respective thread type (e.g., WTB, INT, FS, etc.), particularly because the thread-type's positioning is giving visual alignment the bird -- the spacing and semicolons of the type in the context of surrounding text is visually confusing. It's also the culprit of pushing a number of thread titles onto two lines.
Anyway, I have some more thoughts and ideas on this, but it's late and I'm falling asleep and I've probably said too much already
). Regardless, just a personal opinion and some light suggestions, no harm either way. I want the RPF firing on all possible cylinders, helping the community continue to thrive and grow!
From a design perspective, visualized boundaries and borders separating threads aren't well defined. The alternating sizes of fonts (multiple per thread listing), all in very close proximity to each other, stacked vertically on multiple lines (and aren't aligning well horizontally), and then above all, to have nearly everything void of color except for a few shades of gray -- it makes for a visually confusing and chaotic layout, IMHO.
A key principle of design is understanding that the eye/mind like to both group things together visually, and seek for patterns. Currently, the design makes it difficult to do either of those, forcing the eye to "stutter" disjointedly, being unable to find clear, orderly, repeating patterns and divisions.
I understand most people probably won't "see" any of this without having some experience or background in design, but nevertheless, I do think that a couple suggestions and tweaks of design would help the entire forum, one and all, whether such would be consciously recognized or not.
If I can make a few suggestions --
1.) At the very least, I would add a bit more color to the scheme for better visual separation between threads/boundaries/lines. Currently, the shades of gray are too similar and subtle to very clearly differentiate between what's what.
2.) In tangent to adding color, I would stretch the page layout out wider so that thread titles aren't stacking two lines up per thread. Currently in the Junkyard, nearly half the page's threads have titles spilling onto two lines. The multi-lined titles are adding a lot of visual chaos to the page, making it cluttered and further harder to to "flow".
3.) Remove the RPF logo from each thread line. It's adding a lot of clutter to the page aesthetics, particularly because each logo is adding ~5 extra horizontal "lines", visually. Additionally, those logo "lines" aren't aligning with the respective text lines of the thread (title, user, time), thus adding more visual dissonance.
At the very least, if the per-thread logo must be kept, I'd suggest putting a solid border line around each logo, to stem a bit of the visual disjointedness. Perhaps even better would be to replace each thread-line's RPF logo with the respective thread type (e.g., WTB, INT, FS, etc.), particularly because the thread-type's positioning is giving visual alignment the bird -- the spacing and semicolons of the type in the context of surrounding text is visually confusing. It's also the culprit of pushing a number of thread titles onto two lines.
Anyway, I have some more thoughts and ideas on this, but it's late and I'm falling asleep and I've probably said too much already
). Regardless, just a personal opinion and some light suggestions, no harm either way. I want the RPF firing on all possible cylinders, helping the community continue to thrive and grow!
