Its use here may connect to the Modern movement in design and architecture, strongest in the mid-twentieth century, which emphasized simple shapes, lack of ornamentation, and clean lines:
(Aside: Why does the Gmail preview use almost the same header style as the new Google Calendar/Search/Maps/etc. theme, but with the colors and sizes slightly altered? It's a minor difference, but distracting when switching tabs between Gmail and any other Google site.)
I agree -- the designer here is maybe not consciously referring to Modernists like Frank Lloyd Wright. He might just means that it "look more contemporary." But twentieth-century modernism had a huge influence on why our culture thinks some designs look more "modern" than others, and also helped make "modern" one of the values on which we judge aesthetics in the first place.
I didn't notice due to adblock, but Gmail has provided such a fantastic service for free over the years and really improved the quality of the webmail experience. I don't think I could complain much even if they put more adclick spots in Gmail — it still beats all the alternatives in my book.
I'd go as far as to say that I've never seen a floating at the bottom, scrolling toolbar which did anything other than annoy me. They also tend to mess up the "find" functionality, as they cover the actual occurrence of what you're looking for.
That said, I'm sure this will be one of the most clicked ads, as it's noticeable while not overly large.
I'm inclined to disagree. They're using the color sparingly to call attention to the most important parts of the interface. Coloring compose with the standard gray for the other buttons would mean it is lost in the interface and difficult to see. I like it quite a bit.
It's closer, but it still increases the screen real-estate used by some elements significantly - for example, the line item for each email displayed in the inbox has grown from 23px tall to 29px tall in the redesign. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I prefer higher information density.
thanks for pointing that out - I prefer the old dense design because of how much more can fit on the screen when using my laptop. I even zoom it in twice.
I find myself setting the zoom level on a lot of these new 'modern' designs. I like to keep browser windows narrow so I re-claim some of that real estate by shrinking the page down. Some of these sites, like Twitter, look weird on normal zoom levels and feel too spaced out
It might be because I grew up using applications that only had 800 or so pixels to work with, so everything was dense. anything that is spaced out I associate with accesible versions of software made for old people, the vision impaired or babies - weird that it is what is considered 'modern' design now
It doesn't matter if they moved 1 pixel, if the result works then it works. The definition of remodeling doesn't need to be 'long and laborious'. Same happens on art like paintings, I've heard people say "Bah, that's just a line with dots, I can do that".
Interesting that they're adding additional details of the person you're conversing with to the right above the ads. I wonder what that means for Rapportive.
There's a lot more white space in the new design - enough vertical space is lost for about seven conversation entries. Not sure I like this change for that reason...
Google's blog post actually mentions that they are both a preview for the actual new/yet unreleased theme, that will expand and contract dynamically according to screen real estate.
Something I'm surprised about is that after all the testing google was doing this spring, this seems completely out of the blue. I wonder if they did test this on a larger scale and I just missed it, or they are winging it? If so, kudos to them for taking a huge risk.
As an aside, I just realized that the new design reminds me heavily of Ubuntu with the dark gray and orange highlights.
Also, if you use large text, the text "Gmail Calendar Documents," etc, overruns the bottom of the black bar. I know there is a way to make a bar that does not have that problem because the orange bar on HN does not have that problem.
Sometimes I like to browse without putting on my eyeglasses, by making the text large.
This is my main concern. The vast majority of the time, I'm browsing with text enlarged (without scaling up the rest of the site/images/css). I just hope it doesn't end up being a horrible case of DIVs overlapping, making things unreadable.
That new "dense" GMail theme has the bar's opacity set to ~40% and is much less jarring. I think the black bar wouldn't be an issue if the rest of the pages weren't so low contrast now.
I really like the new apps and search interface, but the use of red is really bugging me. Surely this is basic UI that urgent things are made red like alerts etc. I fail to see why the 'compose mail' and 'create' calendar event buttons need to be a glaring red?
I'm a pretty huge fan of all the new Google designs. Plus, gmail, the top bar, fonts.... They've kept things minimalistic while making things just feel cleaner and crisper. Whoever is leading this redesign is doing a fantastic job.
That's not exactly correct. According to the article Hertzfeld was the key interface designer behind the Circles UI in Google+. The Google-wide visual redesign is the result of a lot of people's work.
Andy Hertzfeld did the Circles editor in Google+. The site-wide redesign is done by Google Creative Labs, which I think is behind the Search On advertisement series and the Parisian Love Superbowl ad. It's also had significant input and direction from the individual teams, eg. most of the Search UX team was involved in the websearch portion of the redesign.
Very good point. I assumed because they looked very similar that it was the same person, but quite possible that someone else did the designs. Definitely very similar elements in UI though.
"Hertzfeld, who has been working at Google since 2005, is indeed the one we can thank for the better-looking interface on Google+, as he’s the design lead on the project."
He was the lead for the design, not just the circles features.
There was a really good talk on the new Android Honeycomb UI at this year's Google I/O. The designers talked about wanting to move away from explicit box structures and to use type and spacing more to indicate structure. I really think they're on the right track with this, and they seem to be taking this approach with their new web UIs too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGIU2JX1U5Y
That said, the left pane of the new gmail interface looks a little too spartan at first blush. Maybe I'll get used to it but it looks a little unfinished to me now.
I jumped into an email thread and it feels like I'm reading the soot filled footprints of ancient Siberians crossing the glacial land bridge: everything's surrounded by so much white!
In this new design it's hard for my eyes to stay focused on the actual content.
I'm not liking the big red "Compose Mail" button and labels. Red is usually used as an indicator of warning and error messages, and the giant red button really jumps out at you when you first see the redesign.
If you're trying to move away from the "40 shades of blue" while keeping a fun and playful feel, why not use green?
Done. Also, on closer inspection, I think I see the rationale for their decision. They may have chosen red because it looks like red may be the "official" color of Gmail -- notice the red line on the top nav bar above "Gmail," along with the red "M" in the logo.
I now think the red works best too (but felt the same way as you about it at first). Other colours stand out against the red "Mail" and "Inbox" links, which gives a somewhat technicoloured dreamcoat feel to the UI. They could change the red links to green, but then they lose the connection with the red 'M' envelope character, as you rightly point out. A light grey might work, but probably wouldn't stand out enough for new users.
I think Reader need a complete re-design, tweaks on line of Gmail won't help. I have some 1400+ items in my subscription list. And it is not comfortable to read all that stuff in google reader's current avatar. So for now feedly has rescued me. Google reader should offer a feedly type opt-in view. Or it can have a two layouts one for power users and another for people with two digit subscriptions.
If you use folders to keep things separate and take advantage of the compressed view (accessed by pressing "2"), I find that Reader is extremely usable for dealing with large numbers of feeds - I'm at 116 subscriptions right now. Admittedly, that isn't anywhere near the 1400+ subscriptions you claim (how do you have time to deal with all of them?), but I feel that Reader would scale well if I did increase to that number. I probably wouldn't be able to deal with it, though.
On my Gmail, it's a dark grey which I like, but in Calendar it's pure black. I think the pure black is pretty jarring but the grey nicely transitions from the browser bar.
Does anyone with an Apps account have the ability to preview the theme(s)? I don't, in my apps account.
Yet another example of Google treating apps customers as 2nd class citizens. See also: account/login issues and lack of profiles (which means no Places, no Google+, and other products). Google is effectively ignoring what are often their best/most enthusiastic customers in by doing things like this. Very puzzling.
I completely agree about apps customers being treated like 2nd class citizens. I was not impressed when I found out I couldn't create a Google+ account due to lack of profiles, this will probably result in many of those people creating new Google accounts just to test those products out.
I have three Google Apps accounts. The new themes are available in two of my three Google Apps accounts. I'm an admin on all three accounts, so I'm not sure why the new themes aren't available for some Google Apps users.
Yes, I also have an apps account and wanted to try out the new preview themes and Google+. I like to try new things and I'm sure a lot of Google Apps users are just like me. Google is missing out, but how do we inform them of it?
Yes. I did enable gmail themes in my Apps dashboard a few months ago and this isn't being treated different to other themes so far from what I can see.
When I first saw Google+, I felt that it looked a lot like [Helvetireader](http://helvetireader.com/) to the point where I thought that they may have been (heavily) inspired.
With the new Gmail interface, this can't be a coincidence.
Credit where credit is due? Hell, are we talking about a blatant rip-off?
I agree, but I wonder if they keep it because it still gets lot of action for some reason (less computer savvy users see it and think 'great, I'll invite Bob!'?).
I still use it all the time to convert people to gmail. In the past month alone I have converted 10+ people, mostly non-tech (ie. parents, brothers, godparents etc.)
Google are very analytics driven in product design, if it wasn't being used and wasn't serving a purpose, I believe they would have removed it already or freed up that real estate for something else
If Google was that analytics driven they would get rid of it for people that don't use it. I haven't used it since gmail was in beta, I definitely haven't used it for at least 5+ years. And yet it's still there.
If you "Invite" people they don't need to do the captcha or verification, Gmail "trusts" them to be human because they got referred by an existing user.
I really hope they preserve the Classic view. I can't stand how spaced out everything is. I went from being able to see 10 or so contacts in Gchat without scrolling down to just 4.
Edit: That's with the "Dense" view. Regular is even worse.
ironically, they need to improve the quality of the gmail search feature for that to be a viable direction in which to push users; the responsiveness and the lack of wildcards immediately comes to mind.
The lack of stemming is pretty bad, too. If I have a message with the word "dog" but I search for "dogs," I won't get any results. A search for "dog" will return the message, however.
Agreed. Everything has too much whitespace. Also there needs to be more borders and accents within reason. Everything kind of just blends together as white to my eyes right now. This goes for gcal too. Glad this is an optional theme for now though.
Was it designed with small devices in mind, with less consideration given to laptops and desktops? Reading on a 15" laptop, it's annoying how much more screen space I have to scan to get the same information. I feel like I'm reading with my neck instead of my eyes.
> I went from being able to see 10 or so contacts in Gchat without scrolling down to just 4.
I have found that the right-side chat Gmail labs feature is useful as a way to display additional contacts without scrolling in Gchat. It may be even more useful with the increased spacing.
I'm thinking it might work well for me on a higher res screen. On the 1280x800 MBP screen I'm on now it's not very usable. I switched back to "Basic White" theme. I like that one a lot.
The month view in the new Calendar is even worse. You could see 5 appointments per day (4 if you had more than 5, since it showed '+x more'). Now you can see only one. It has gone for good to useless.
Yes, it turns out it grows based on the screen size. Still, with the browser maximized on my laptop, I see only one where it used to be 5 (or 4 + more).
For me, great design really translates into "ADD friendly." Visual clutter is a nightmare for me in terms of immediate focus. This simple spacing does WONDERS for visual organization in my brain. It really is amazing. I've actually written scripts before to add some padding (CSS padding that is) to reddit to make things easier.
I find that using the Dense view, then zooming out one tick in your web browser produces a very nice look. Although that's more of a workaround than a fix to a potential problem.
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[ 451 ms ] story [ 4377 ms ] threadhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_architecture
(Aside: Why does the Gmail preview use almost the same header style as the new Google Calendar/Search/Maps/etc. theme, but with the colors and sizes slightly altered? It's a minor difference, but distracting when switching tabs between Gmail and any other Google site.)
That's one way to increase clicks.
I'd try the new theme if it wasn't for that...it's very distracting when scrolling down.
That said, I'm sure this will be one of the most clicked ads, as it's noticeable while not overly large.
They really want people to notice these changes, it creates more publicity for Google+.
I don't mind the modern hot-orange. It's a great colour for feature highlights etc. But as a button background it just screams "ERROR".
I find myself setting the zoom level on a lot of these new 'modern' designs. I like to keep browser windows narrow so I re-claim some of that real estate by shrinking the page down. Some of these sites, like Twitter, look weird on normal zoom levels and feel too spaced out
It might be because I grew up using applications that only had 800 or so pixels to work with, so everything was dense. anything that is spaced out I associate with accesible versions of software made for old people, the vision impaired or babies - weird that it is what is considered 'modern' design now
Rapportive responded quite well: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2613101
I had assumed Gmail wouldn't need this, but it made a big difference. Looks like they have a slight caching problem.
As an aside, I just realized that the new design reminds me heavily of Ubuntu with the dark gray and orange highlights.
Sometimes I like to browse without putting on my eyeglasses, by making the text large.
(edit: removed second sentence after finding out actual reason)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2712469
Firefox (with the Stylish extension): http://userstyles.org/styles/49963/google-toolbar-whitener
[1] Who wrote In the Plex.
[2] http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-so...
"Hertzfeld, who has been working at Google since 2005, is indeed the one we can thank for the better-looking interface on Google+, as he’s the design lead on the project."
He was the lead for the design, not just the circles features.
*that, and because Sprint isn't getting the Pre 3.
That said, the left pane of the new gmail interface looks a little too spartan at first blush. Maybe I'll get used to it but it looks a little unfinished to me now.
I jumped into an email thread and it feels like I'm reading the soot filled footprints of ancient Siberians crossing the glacial land bridge: everything's surrounded by so much white!
In this new design it's hard for my eyes to stay focused on the actual content.
Ref: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/evolving-google-desig...
If you're trying to move away from the "40 shades of blue" while keeping a fun and playful feel, why not use green?
Green button: https://img.skitch.com/20110701-pff56qthuqr89t77d2x3u2smhj.p...
Grey button: https://img.skitch.com/20110701-wwxrad2urrj1xjmanusme8w9w.pn...
I now think the red works best too (but felt the same way as you about it at first). Other colours stand out against the red "Mail" and "Inbox" links, which gives a somewhat technicoloured dreamcoat feel to the UI. They could change the red links to green, but then they lose the connection with the red 'M' envelope character, as you rightly point out. A light grey might work, but probably wouldn't stand out enough for new users.
I hope I can change the vertical line density back.
I like this one a lot better than the classic which had way too much intrusive background colour.
Yet another example of Google treating apps customers as 2nd class citizens. See also: account/login issues and lack of profiles (which means no Places, no Google+, and other products). Google is effectively ignoring what are often their best/most enthusiastic customers in by doing things like this. Very puzzling.
Account admins have a lot of control over what is turned on or off under the accounts
With the new Gmail interface, this can't be a coincidence.
Credit where credit is due? Hell, are we talking about a blatant rip-off?
Google are very analytics driven in product design, if it wasn't being used and wasn't serving a purpose, I believe they would have removed it already or freed up that real estate for something else
It would make sense for them to discontinue Buzz though, since they now have Google+.
This is exciting.
Edit: That's with the "Dense" view. Regular is even worse.
I go from seeing 34 messages per page to 24. And about 20 letters of the message summary are dropped.
I have found that the right-side chat Gmail labs feature is useful as a way to display additional contacts without scrolling in Gchat. It may be even more useful with the increased spacing.
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-in-labs-right-side...