Anyhoo, these are my thoughts on the most recent Gaia redesign:
THE GOOD
- It's more happy and bright, and has less of a corporate feel to the previous design.
The landing pages of each of the sections, especially the spotlights, put more focus on real Gaians and bring more of a community feel ^_^ They also brought more people to my profile throught Lull's featured one, and that's always nice too xd I like that each one is relevant to its section - I'm interested in featured profiles and homes and things on the Community page, and not so interested in Games stuff - which I end up not seeing, since I don't go to games.
The new menu structure better reflects what Gaia has become - it's not longer just an anime roleplaying forum with extra stuff, its more than that. It brings emphasis on the games/towns up to the same level as the forums, which makes sense as they're important parts of Gaia now too.
I'm glad that they kept the more handy form of navigation instead of forcing the World Map - but still glad that they decided to keep the map in there for people who choose to use it.
New emotes! Yay. What does the cheese/wine one mean?
Starter sets for all! Very smart move - hell, I remember people complaining when newbies started getting free peasant outfits when we had to pay for them when we started. This way everyone is happy. I've also heard more than one person say that they dislike the new layout but love the free items, so they were happy - clever way to ease the rebranding in with some subtle bribery.
THE BAD
- The orange in the logo isn't really brought through in the rest of the layout. I like orange, and some little flashes of it here and there might make it more consistent and ease in the rebranding a bit better.
Too much white! gonk I agreed with complaints that the background of the previous layout was too dark, but the amount of white in this layout makes it look plain after you've gotten past the header (which is mostly white too...), especially at higher resolutions. This doesn't look so bad in areas with lots of graphics (like the landing pages) or even pages with that blue strip and the wing borders (like the forum pages) - there is some kind of border there to guide the eyes, give them a rest from the expanse of white, and let them know that its a new line. In threads now I have the feeling of the content leaking out the sides of the page.
The header is a bit plain for my tastes, and adds to the plainness of this layout sad I don't mind the new look of the people, but I can't help feeling that they don't match the NPC art which has such an anime influence, and it appeals less to me. It would be interesting if the admins decided to make the image change with the seasons ala the Google logo... but it's winter here, and personally, seeing happy smiling WARM people while I'm cold makes me feel like I'm being mocked :XP
I think the 'A place to meet people, share stuff, play games and more' is unneccessary on every page and really does seem to trivialise what Gaia is somehow, like its being marketed towards a younger crowd. If it has to be there at least use a different type from non-aliased Verdana - its in a picture, go crazy and put some aliasing in there at least!
I really liked the convenience of the menu in the previous layout - you could get anywhere you wanted to go in one click. After spoiling is with that we really can't go backwards to this more clunky system that forces you to click on a section and then on a subsection. I'd like to see a dynamic menu again like before, maybe with the added feature of it snapping back to the current page when the mouse isn't hovering over something.
The Gaia home page looks really cluttered for some reason... I'd say its because the coloumns that the content is arranged in are a bit all over the place.
The Gaia info in the blue bar on the right that appears on some pages - I'm sorry, I really don't care sad I was hoping that we could get some more relevant info, like a mini version of channels or a (Gaia specific) feedreader kind of thing in that area.
I really don't understand why my avatar has to be so small! There appears to be enough room there for it to be its actual size, so why not? When I started on Gaia my avatar was the first thing I'd see, in the prime area in the top left corner of my screen. Then it got moved to the fell area in the top right, separated from the world... and now its beeen moved further down and shrunken. I hope this isn't symbolic of the view Gaia has of its users as individuals.
I understand that the new buttons for trades, mail etc might be better from a functional perspective - we can now access all these things from there instead of wading through the menu. It does feel less cute and more impersonal compared to the little speechbubble that we've all grown used to. I also don't really like the way that it's positioned - it really feels that since these buttons are relevant to me that they should be close to my avatar, not floating by themselves.
I don't like the Gaia A-Z - it seems pointless, I think the tour should really be enough for new users to get the idea. At the moments its just taking up space and won't be used by the majority of users.
The footer is boring sad Put some colour back in there! Even if its just a bar of the same colour as the bar at the top - it would bring the layout a bit more of a sense of balance.
There are a lot of remnants ot previous layouts here and there - a more consistent feel across the site would be nice.
THE INTERESTING
Gaia did a pretty big rebranding - if you are a large, successful and recognisable company, then even something as small as changing the colour of your logo is a big thing. Your logo is part of your identity, how people recognise you. So Gaia changing its blue and pink logo for orange was a big move that must have had a lot of consideration put into it.
There's also been quite a change in direction from Gaia's humble beginnings - I went through a phase where I wanted to try and make a forum RP site, and looked up a lot of history of Gaia and interviews with Lanzer. Gaia was originally focussed on its anime link list, which no longer exists. The site had a focus on anime/fantasy type role playing, inspired heavily by games like Ragnarok Online. Gaia has grown beyond that, and now seems to be aiming for a wider audience than anime fans, and the new layout really shows that.
That's all I can think of for now ^_^
Community Member
The old saying to get a complainer to shut up was, "Would you like some cheese to go with that wine?"