Bland designs

So, BBC News is rolling out a new look across the news site. It follows very strongly the theme from the main site:

Bland.

It's black and white and red. Even the red banner has lost any distinction - the 'news' globe that unified the BBC brand has gone. Other than pictures in the articles, there are no colours other than red.

It always did like a simple font, as clear a layout as possible, but this has stripped it back even further. Indeed, there's so much white space, that it ends up making it difficult to differentiate between the content; which seems weirdly crammed together.

It's somewhat different to the BBC Sport pages, which are so busy. They are positively cluttered - so many stories that to cram them in the headline has to be so similar a typesize to the summary. The article pages have info boxes and pictures scattered around disrupting the flow of the text. They obviously listened to that criticism when redesigning the News site.

Well, that and the people behind gov.uk. Have you noticed how similar the two sites are? Top banner, sans serif font, black and white, blocky, clear (bland?) layout.

And it's not the only site either. The National Lottery relaunched its website a month or two ago and it is similar - blocks, straight lines, angles, sans serif (though it does have much bigger, less necessary pictures).

And so has Outlook, although that is unifying the new Microsoft look - As Windows 8 launched, with it's square tile format for absolute, distinct clarity across a range of devices and screen sizes.

And that is part of the reason for the new websites - mobile. If you look at the beginning of the BBC URL, it starts m.bbc - indicating this to be a mobile redirect site. And that's the problem. Web designers are being asked to design websites for screens from 5 inches to 55 inches. But they are getting sloppy. It would be so easy to have two sites - one for mobile devices, and one for desktop. Tablets could direct to either. But they won't do more work than is necessary - or rather, the client won't pay for two designs.

There are some reasons for some of the decisions. Sans serif fonts - as well as being de mode at the minute - work better on pixellated screens; whilst serif fonts work better in print where the serif allows the text to flow, draws the eye across the word. Indeed, as the BBC's own justification behind their previous design change, the font has been picked for clarity. This distinction is becoming eroded as even small five inch screen start packing in 500+ pixels per square inch.

And again, blocky edges work better on LED/LCD screens as opposed to CRTs which used to be able to produce the rounded edges. But again, as screens have higher definition and refresh frequencies, the blur becomes less of an issue.

Some of it does come down to fashion - remember with web 2.0 where almost every single site - even the BBC - had customisable widgets or modules. They looked cool, modern. You told your client you were not just in touch with their users, but engaging with them - treating them as adults, letting them choose their content. They couldn't BE any more customer-focused.

Just as the BBC abandoned these, the local newspapers took them up. The problem being that people didn't want to customise the sites. Quite frequently they wouldn't land through the homepage, but click through from another site or a search result. Even if they did go to the homepage, a well designed and laid out homepage should give you everything you need without you having to select your own content. If you end up having to customise the homepage of each site you land on, that's a lot of customising, particularly as sites tend to refresh themselves every two or three years.

And big, bold, blocky is the latest of these fads. Curiously, whilst Apple usually excels at design, and whilst it's iOS phone operating system is widely regarded as probably the best - at least, the simplest - mobile operating system; the higgledy-piggledy design of the apps spawning (yes, another BBC article) discussion when it simplified some of the symbols.

Also, designers are taking award winning design advice. The gov.uk website (see beginning of this blog) won the Design Museum's Design of the Year Award for 2013 for "well thought out but understated design". They have been very open about sharing their Design Principles. And it's all lovely - a lot of common sense.

But the problem is that if everyone follows the same rules, they walk in the same direction. The redesigns may well have well thought out, understated designs; but one they don't have is distinction. Indeed, amongst those sites identified there is very little - aside from the 'brand' colour - to differentiate between the sites. With conformity they lose identity.

It's the curious paradox that as technology becomes more complex, so design targets simplicity; retaining the natural entropy.