The Guardian digital design style guide(design.theguardian.com) |
The Guardian digital design style guide(design.theguardian.com) |
However, I may never understand why grid systems get the amount of reverence that they do. Although there's a certain necessity in having consistency, I can't help but view grid systems has a sort of pseudoscience. Page 2/7 in this style guide shows examples of many page elements that aren't really consistent with their grid. I've also seen plenty of websites with great designs that have different sized margins, or they lack dead space, or their gutters are different sizes, and they look fine. Grids make more sense for print because you have a single size of viewport, vertically and horizontally, therefore you need to have a system for fitting what you can on a single page. On the web, there's infinite vertical space, and most news websites don't take "above the fold" that seriously anymore. Besides, the web developer will inevitably be asked to do some one off special design at some point that violates the grid system. It might as well not exist, but be relegated to a light guideline.
The problem with this focus on design consistency and cosmetic features is that they loose the global view. I pay for the Guardian, and I'm glad to pay for their content, yet I still have to use uBlock to hide some annoying blocks. I've also painfully configured uBlock to disable carrousels (how am I supposed to read anything with images sliding next to it?). And I still prefer their website with JS turned off, though it breaks a few things.
I'd prefer an ugly and inconsistent frontpage, even a plain table of titles, if there was a way to, for instance, display the most important news of the last X=5 days in the category Y=International, etc.
The Guardian's website has changed very little since 2015 or so[0]. The logo, fonts, and colour palette have evolved in 2018, but the structure, grid, or even the category colours (orange for opinion, blue for sport, etc.) have not changed at all.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20150131232757/http://www.thegua...
https://herman.bearblog.dev/blog/
One url for the whole day. Oh how I hate the scroll.
Since I'm a run-of-the-mill data-oriented app developer I'm familiar with design languages like Material, Ant Design, Microsoft Fluent, etc. But those design languages don't tell me how to structure a run-of-the-mill admin panel app from parts.
Does anyone know of a guide for a data-oriented application similar to this?
Their Scottish reporting continues in the same vein to this day.
It seems the Guardian's editorial position has become decidedly centrist/establishment since I first started reading the Guardian Weekly many many years ago. They have long since stopped being the voice of the left. That is unless you subscribe to a left/right schism defined along the lines of identity politics - which helps explain the Guardian's rejection of Sanders in favour of Clinton.
Despite all of that, I do still find it a good source of news and visit the site most days. Aside from the content, the site is very good in my opinion. I'll be taking a closer look at the design style guide for sure.
also the reason designers were posting this was because they were all looking for jobs.