The Verge Redesign - designer review

My thoughts on a very popular tech-news website going full brutalism!

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🔮 More about the video:
Brutalist style is having a comback in web and app designs this year. Sure it can't fit every possible product, but it's being used more and more nevertheless. The question is - does it work for a text-heavy blog that's all about reading and consuming content? There have been failed attempts at this in the past - will @TheVerge make it work this time? Let's explore!

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I'm a designer, entrepreneur and startup founder. I started back in the late 90's and currently my main goal is to share my knowledge, both paid and free. This channel is one of the places where I share my tips on design, user experience, growth, marketing, life and mindfulness. Subscribe to stay in touch. ❤️

#brutalism #theverge #redesign

[yojanselcuevas]

I like the new style cuz it’s a combination of fashion and tech news. However, I think the readability experience is very bad cuz I see lots of different alignments of elements and paragraphs and different typographies

[Lucalaurin]

As an avid the verge reader I am very disappointed with this new design. The white on black text makes everything more difficult to read. Visually it's confusing and I have to focus a lot to decipher where one headline ends and the next starts. Making this worse is the inclusion of these kind of "tweets" that are one sentence that leads to another website. Imo if you want to do that make a newsletter or do this on twitter (all your writers are already as well). If you have to have this on your main page have a way to visually distinguish it from a legit article like a different colour of text or sth.

[DavidHunter]

It’s hideous. I used to visit almost everyday, it was so quick to just glance up and down and see what interests me. The new site… it’s a nightmare. I’ve tried going back a couple of times, I immediately close the tab.

[toxicotto]

Contrasts, amounts, hierarchy, , reading patterns are also a big issue in my opinion in the direction. Not only grouping, orientation, style and element overload are problematic. I am really curious if they made any type of testing before the release. Also how their retention will change with the new design :)

[SzabatDesign]

I have somewhere in the back of my head to do a Brutalism project. Overall, so many plans for projects and so little time! :D Nice content like always. Nice to hear something like that from someone experienced. It teaches us a lot for beginners.

[proceph]

I think they went overboard with the main page, way too chaotic. the article layout seems okay. also maybe it's me, but I hate having bright solid colors on the screen I am trying to read 😅 Wished they went with something like a mix of Medium and Spotify.

On another note, I think Inverse does the 'wacky, bold' concept quite well. looks great on mobile too

[tonyfarahdesign]

Super interesting. Thanks so much! As someone that is still learning this is great to see how you break down your critique.

[ChipRiggs]

I'm stoked that you're covering this. 🙌🙌

As a daily Verge reader this redesign kind of took me by surpirse. I need to use the site for a week or so to see how I really feel about it but I will say that it reminds me of a mid 90s era Wired Magazine experimental layout more than anything. They didn't go full David Carson on it, but the readability is still suffering quite a bit (as you mentioned). Recently they put up an hour long podcast episode talking about the redesign which might be worth a listen, I haven't checked it out yet myself but it's in the feed and I'm hoping for some insight into the decisions that were made that brought them to this final design.

A little outside the scope of the design but also I'm not sure about their decision to start including excerpts to articles on other sites with links that go off site. I get the curation aspect of it but that's not why I read The Verge.

Thanks for all you're doing, I really appreciate all the knowledge and insights you're putting out.

[superNova]

Something else the lack of a consistent theme
the home page is dark background but on an article it turns to light background and the super bright color doesn’t really help either
Let alone most people were probably used to the previous design

[gamervmid]

Great review but why the scrolling is so choppy?

[WhitecatProject]

Accessing the verge through my iPhone 6.1 screen is painful at the level that I just stopped reading it. I can’t focus, trying to understand where the real content is, and whether I am looking at a twitter comment or a different article. It’s completely inconsistent.

[rishabhagarwal]

How are you able to put songs at the end of your videos?

[rafaelm.]

Great points in your video! I was skeptical of the redesign at first when I tried it on my laptop. But the dark background, the typeface choices make more sense on phones. The new logo is refreshed, but the overall branding is a weaker than the old one.

[davidoyewole]

The bright colors and unusual use of type are catchy but they seem like a terrible choice for a news website. Especially one that writes lengthy articles.

[JGLCSW]

Two things I noticed right away from this design. There are some news pieces on the main site that seemingly have no links for further reading. I believe it was a Fortnite post regarding Twitter. There was a Twitter screen capture and a short summary, but oddly no link or space to click on to further read. Secondly and most annoyingly, I did not see any comments on the articles. I typically scroll down to the comments to see if the article is even worth reading based on comments. Clicked on seven to nine articles and none of them had comments. The Verge tends to be biased and sometimes very unaware of what consumers and us techphiles actually like or want. People in the comment section check The Verge on their ignorance and bias. Without these comments, I am not going to bother. I'll get my news from another tech website that embraces and can take cricism when they fuck up.

[cryptoland]

How to design this kind of pages in WordPress using elementor?

[hacorn]

There should be inherent harmony with chaotic layouts and colors. Otherwise the visuals do the opposite job. YouTubers like Ansh Mehra has pointed this out as well.

[njengathegeek]

Personally, I have used the verge website before, u know am in tech and I need to catch up with the trend, I won't give my opinion now untill I interact with it a little bit...nice update

[luckisfaith]

It's only interesting for us, designers, and maybe some art lovers.
But for the Average Joe that visits their site is just a pain in the ass. They'll dial it back for sure. But it's always appreciated when something different goes outside of the conventional and risks to try new stuff.

[JCJW]

I didn't renew my subscription to Wired Magazine as it was basically unreadable for me. This reminds me of that.