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Hi guys,

As you can see, the new design launched. Congrats and many thanks for your design inputs.

Please let me know if you see any usability/CSS/Styling bugs. Please start a new question for these bug reports, tag them with "Design" "Bug" please.

Again, congrats!

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    I created an account just to congratulate you on this awesome design -- good luck topping it in the future!
    – juan
    Commented Oct 14, 2010 at 20:17
  • Jin, could you provide a large-ish square png of the chef hat logo, with a transparent background?
    – hobodave Mod
    Commented Oct 15, 2010 at 2:36
  • @hobodave is this what you need? sstatic.net/cooking/img/apple-touch-icon.png
    – Jin
    Commented Oct 15, 2010 at 19:51
  • Perfect! Thanks Jin.
    – hobodave Mod
    Commented Oct 15, 2010 at 20:30
  • @Jin I just noticed the favicon for the first time. Nice touch! Overall, I'm really impressed with the completeness of your design.
    – Ben McCormack
    Commented Oct 21, 2010 at 18:01
  • As this is about a month old and hasn't had any new activity for at least a few weeks, I assume nobody minds if I take the [featured] tag off. Let me know if it's a problem.
    – Aaronut Mod
    Commented Nov 12, 2010 at 18:48
  • @aaronut please do. thanks.
    – Jin
    Commented Nov 12, 2010 at 18:50

3 Answers 3

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I've said it before. I really don't like this design. It looks like a nice homey recipe exchange site, which is fine, except that's not what we are.

Once again I must reiterate my deep disappointment that this was presented as 'preliminary,' when it was, very clearly, no such thing at all. When only one option is presented--you know this as a designer, Jin--there is no chance to properly see or evaluate other options.

Oh well, I'm just going to have to dig up Greasemonkey and make the site look decent again. I just really dislike the impression that this design is going to give new visitors who don't know what this site is about or how it works.

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    I agree strongly with this. It is a perfectly fine design, just not a design for a site that I'm very excited to participate in. It really feels like the design of a supermarket checkout lane "50 Best Cookie Recipes For Holiday Stocking Stuffers" mag.
    – Michael Natkin
    Commented Oct 15, 2010 at 5:11
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    @Michael: I can see where both of you are coming from, however, I saw no viable alternatives being proposed, and a lot of people did like this design. It's easy to say, "make the design reminiscent of these photos of food", but not necessarily practical to do on a site that is mostly text. I hope that people aren't going to take this personally when we obviously don't have the luxury of voting on proposals from 30 different graphic designers. And, by the way, we had a flurry of new questions yesterday, none about recipes, so I don't think the theme is really throwing people off.
    – Aaronut Mod
    Commented Oct 15, 2010 at 14:01
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    Argh, keep forgetting about hitting enter in comment boxes. What is really frosting my cookies is the blatantly false 'preliminary' design. The differences between the final product and the 'preliminary' version are minute at most. Don't call something preliminary when what you mean is 'this is basically what it will look like, minus some tweaks.' At the very least, Jin should have presented two different options. When you're only given one option, there isn't much room for change.
    – daniel
    Commented Oct 15, 2010 at 14:26
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    @daniel, a quick and dirty sketch isn't really what would have been needed to change the winds. If somebody had presented a polished mockup, or even been able to point to existing site designs that we might have been able to adapt to a Q&A format, it could have made an impact; I think Jin did listen to and act on specific criticisms (for example the logo), but it's hard to act on "I don't like it, do it again." Yes, he could have presented two designs, but I think Jin is under some pretty intense time constraints, trying to design for 50 new sites.
    – Aaronut Mod
    Commented Oct 15, 2010 at 14:49
  • I'm not saying that this design perfectly mirrors our community's current "personality" or what we want it to be, but then show me something that does. It's got to look polished and professional.
    – Aaronut Mod
    Commented Oct 15, 2010 at 14:52
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    We didn't even get the chef's hat changed. Approximately zero chefs have worn toques in 30+ years. Dorky.
    – Michael Natkin
    Commented Oct 15, 2010 at 22:02
  • @Michael: We did get it changed, it's not the same toque. Or you mean we didn't get it changed to something else entirely?
    – Aaronut Mod
    Commented Oct 16, 2010 at 3:04
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    Presumably the latter, with which I would agree. It just reminds me of Chef Boyardee.
    – daniel
    Commented Oct 16, 2010 at 3:58
  • Yes, the latter... a toque is just silly. Who wears a toque?
    – Michael Natkin
    Commented Oct 16, 2010 at 5:07
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    The only thing I like about the new design is the way the meta site uses a grayscale version, which immediately and unmistakably connects the two sites while still keeping them distinct. But that would be true of any colorful site design, it doesn't require us to look like Better Homes and Gardens.
    – Marti
    Commented Oct 19, 2010 at 19:12
  • Another thing that really bothers me: in the main list of questions, bold = unread, while in the sidebar list of related questions, bold = read. Confuses the hell out of me every single time.
    – Marti
    Commented Oct 28, 2010 at 17:36
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Personally, I think it looks great visually. I appreciate the new logo as well; it looks a good deal more convincing than the original take!

(Note: The original post was commenting on "Food & Cooking" still being in the logo. That logo has been updated to say "Seasoned Advice.")

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  • try clicking seasonedadvice.com
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Oct 14, 2010 at 19:47
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    @Jeff: OK, I see that the redirect works, but what about the name? Many of us were placated (sort of) by the fact that we'd at least have a name and could chalk up the domain weirdness to "oh, you know, weird internet stuff". And Robert's post on the blog seemed to confirm that, yes, we would choose a name/motto/tagline that would "someday" become a domain. Right now there's zero evidence of the name "Seasoned Advice" anywhere, so if we send people to that URL, they're going to go "WTF".
    – Aaronut Mod
    Commented Oct 14, 2010 at 19:51
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    @Aronut, We all love the name "Seasoned Advice." It was the best. I will change the logo tonight back to it. Stay tuned.
    – Jin
    Commented Oct 14, 2010 at 19:57
  • Alrighty @Jin, thanks for the heads up. It was honestly a bit of a panic moment. :P
    – Aaronut Mod
    Commented Oct 14, 2010 at 19:58
  • @Aaronut Sorry about the "food". It was from this SE site proposal and I didn't think to change it.
    – Kyle Cronin
    Commented Oct 15, 2010 at 5:17
  • @Kyle: No worries there, it's understandable that the original Area 51 proposal wasn't as clearly focused. It was something we figured we'd revisit when the beta was over (and we changed our name to something entirely different).
    – Aaronut Mod
    Commented Oct 15, 2010 at 13:52
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new logo is up now (may take ctrl+F5 to refresh)

alt text

And as always http://seasonedadvice.com will redirect here.

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