June 29, 2004

Coudal Partners Redesigns

Coudal Partners have redesigned their website. Why, you ask, write an entire post about it? Why not just plop it in your oddities sidebar? Because it’s too damn nice for that (which is not to say the stuff in there is second rate crap). I adored the design of the old version. It was subtle, beautiful page layout, very reminiscent of print design. I was jealous of that design, and now I am jealous of this one. The site is subtle, yet detailed and lovingly finessed. Coudal’s website exemplifies good type design on the web; gorgeous layout, wonderful hierarchy, roomy headlines, and let’s not forget the content. I feel like I am reading a newspaper, and man, I have always wanted to make a site like this. Take a bow guys.

Commentary (9):

1. Jason Beaird says… jun 29, 2004 | 4:40 pm

Very nice use of typography and global design rules. The whole site looks like it could have been a physical page ripped out of Communication Arts.

2. Todd says… jun 29, 2004 | 9:39 pm

That’s a nice redesign. I hadn’t been to the site in a few days and it really was nice to see something different. It’s a very elegant site.

I have to second Jason’s comment; it looks like a page right out of a design magazine on the web.

3. David O’Hara says… jun 30, 2004 | 8:08 am

Wow…quite a clean and effective design - very well done. It just needs some tweaking for the “nemesis”, IE6/Win; it currently doesn’t render right.

4. Peter Asquith says… jun 30, 2004 | 7:12 pm

I loved the old version, too, and would often just stare at the layout wondering just how they got the balance so right. The new design doesn’t have the same symmetry but I like its “broadsheet” newspaper style nonetheless. Looks great on a high-res display.

5. yafujifide says… jul 3, 2004 | 12:24 am

I love everything except the gigantic image at the top. I run at high resolution, and still have to scroll down to read the content. If that graphic were shortened about 1000%, I’d like the design a lot more.

6. Yannick says… jul 5, 2004 | 2:50 am

I like the site, especially the large font used for the titles. The only thing I think would be good to change is the middle column. I think it should be given some more width. Or maybe remove some of the articles that are in the middle column, it just looks wierd having that column longer than the other two. I’d say make all 3 columns the same height (length). Other than that it is a really nice site.

7. cF says… jul 9, 2004 | 3:46 pm

I like the typo also..

not sure why its not xhtml.. and alot of the validating errors are easy to fix..

8. Ducky says… jul 15, 2004 | 9:50 pm

Nice site over all. I wonder why chose not to have it display well on screens that are set to 800x600.

9. Alexis Bellido says… jul 20, 2004 | 10:10 pm

Nice design. This should remind us all that vertical scrolling is no longer a bad guy. I think Nielsen already accepted that.