The BBC continues to redesign and develop it’s website, with the BBC News section of the site now being rolled out to a new design.

Curiously, it makes BBC News look less like a world beating news source, as much as a common news blog.

While the previous design was rich in graphics and multimedia displays (top left), the new design (bottom left) appears more minimalist by far, with other stories of interest simply appearing as links on the right, instead of graphics and links:

The site is left looking uninspiring, as if someone just took a free Wordpress theme and made minor modifications to it.

Heck, it looks like anybody set up the template - not a high-flying web designer, but instead a webmaster with a little experience of blogging.

It makes my own personal attempts to skin a website look comparatively world leading by comparison - even though BBC News has no less than 8 different CSS files and 10 different Javascript files called up from a story page.

I’m sure there are various small bugs to iron out - and I’m also sure a lot of people will resist the changeover simply because it’s different.

However there remains a profound criticism that the BBC has dumbed down the look of BBC News - in trying to move away from looking like a world’class news site, and in attempting to look like just another news blog, it denigrates it’s big Unique Selling Point (USP) of being world class.

In doing so, it can only make news blogs on other sites - which have little budget for design and development - simply look more competitive.

Which can only be of benefit to the blogosphere, not the BBC.

The only hope for the BBC is that the design is still at an early stage, and that the look will see considerable work carried out on it as the new design rolls out.

Comments

Related Posts