SPARE THE GENERIC DESIGN-BY-MIDDLE-MANAGEMENT-COMMITTEE MAKEOVER, SPOIL THE CORPORATE WEBQUISITION: Long ago, there was a little web site devoted to Dawson's Creek recaps, then it expanded to the much-loved MightyBigTV (subtitle: Television Without Pity), then it almost folded a couple of times before shadowy white-knight types rescued it, then it got some sort of cease-and-desist letter and promoted its subtitle to title, then it started writing 35-page recaps and became the most powerful outsider (non-network, non-mainstream journalism) TV site on the web and Miss Alli bought herself the tallest most rickety soapbox in the entire world and they started willy-nilly banning commenters for bizarre reasons, and then Bravo bought it. Through it all MightyBigTV/TwoP had a remarkably consistent look. I think I remember exactly one major redesign, coinciding with some massive software upgrade to handle the forum traffic. Simple banner masthead, simple horizontal color-distinguished rows for the most recent stories, teaser box at the right-hand-side, navigation links at the bottom, all thematically integrated with Glark's clever little show icons -- hyperliteral interpretations of show titles, done in thick black ink against bright-colored square backgrounds.
Today's TwoP brings us the most radical redesign in the site's history, and I greet it with a hearty "yuck." Without the Glark icons, the site is just busy and frayed, with floating banners, mastheads, and top-story boxes rattling against each other. The photos replacing the Glark icons eschew humor for dry, legally-cleared identification, which only serves to underline the site's insider sponsorship. Sure, there are some changes that at least some here will welcome (weecaps for sitcoms, for example), but I question the wisdom of buying one of the most do-it-yourself success stories on the web and then bleaching out all of the idiosyncracy. I know that I tend to disagree with the professional web designers -- I love the McSweeney's look (which Blogger will helpfully allow you to rip off) and I have hated every single one of the bi-weekly ESPN.com redesigns that I've seen since I started reading that site in 1994, when Starwave published it (hey, remember when ESPN's layout was just a top story and then a grid of recent headlines, grouped by sport, with "more..." links if you needed them? How did we ever survive without auto-loading ESPNMotion screeching whenever we wanted an update on OJ's most recent felony?). Sometimes, all you really need from a web site is refined, economical simplicity.
Then again, I still lament the loss of the pixellated roll-over-for-photo pictures that the killed-by-acquisition Fametracker used to use instead of the imdb links.
Edited to add: (1) It has come to my attention that the icons may not be Glark-created (though it's not clear to me). I had just assumed that given that Glark was the design maven at TwoP, and I assumed he designed both the Glarkware t-shirts and the icons. Maybe, maybe not.
(2) Sars and Miss Alli are all over the technical forum saying, notwithstanding assumptions there and in the comments here to the contrary, that the forum is to identify technical issues and to request features (e.g., "wider this; drop-down that"), not to shit all over the redesign, lament the loss of our collective tv-obsessive innocence, or attribute motives to the choices made. You can read this either as "we're tired of the criticism" or "our new bosses made us do it over our strenuous objection and there's no going back, so stop creating friction." Whatever the reason, it isn't going to help TwoP's rep as a site that gleefully dishes it out but refuses to take it.
(3) A few months ago, Miss Alli started dropping statements like "when I was a lawyer," etc. She's now listed as a Head of Programming. So it looks like she's a full-time Bravo employee now. Wonder if she got a piece of the purchase price.
(4) Come to think of it, if TwoP is now part of a bureaucracy, does that mean they're going to have less latitude to piss off the audience with random banishments?
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