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New Web Design For Greyscalegorilla 80 Comments

You may have noticed the new design here on Greyscalegorilla. I have been planning to update this site for over a year and I’m glad to say it’s finally here.

Up till now, Greyscalegorilla has been pretty much hacked together. My smart friend Trevor helped me code the first design back in 2008 and the site, up until yesterday, has been a combination of hacks and workarounds from that original design. It made for a site that was hard to update, slow to load, and inconsistent from page to page. Most of the problems came from me hacking away at the CSS and template little by little until it became a giant mess. It may have looked OK on the surface, but the code behind it was gnarly.

The new design was made for a few reasons (faster load time, cleaner look), but the main one is so that you can find tutorials and other posts easier. GSG has years of posts now and most of the older content gets buried so quickly. I wanted to give new visitors to the site an easier way to find what they were looking for and even discover things they weren’t. The search and category view has been streamlined so you can see more per page and the archive view has been added so you can find older posts easier. This design will, of course, evolve over time as we continue to streamline the site for you guys and find problems. But, I’m really glad the core of it is up and ready for viewing. Thanks a ton to Josh for designing and coding the site and especially for staying up late during this weekend to make sure it’s all up and running. High Five!

Finally, since this is a new layout with too many posts to test it on, you may find a few things out of place somewhere. If you see something funny, please drop a note in the comments below. It would be a big help. Thanks as always for being an ongoing part of the Greyscalegorilla community. Keep learning and having fun!

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80 Comments

  2. Abdelhamid

    Congrats Nick.
    welcome back the dark background

    Reply

  4. Christoph

    nice new site nick (:!!
    but i miss the typical greyscalegorilla orange :/
    but anyway congratulations!!

    Reply

  5. Gokhan

    Very Cool & impressive skin for GSG,congratulations Nick ;)

    Reply

  8. Elmir

    Would be nice looking to have a fixed gorilla illustration image as the websites background, just saying ;)

    Reply

  9. felix

    nice! The body text is a little small for my old eyes.

    Reply

  10. Brian

    It’s a variation of big easy template from yootheme?
    Look fine.

    Reply

  11. Ian Digs

    Loving the new look Nick. Thanks for your continued hard work on our behalf :)

    Reply

  12. illd

    So fresh and so clean ;) But to be honest – it loads slower than the old website. Maybe some caching thing…

    Reply

    • Linus

      Yes i also think it loads slower.
      But it looks hella nice nick!

      Reply
    • The Gorilla

      Joshua

      Server is under HEAVY HEAVY load because of the new redesign announcement. We have caching in place as well.

      Reply

  16. Stanly.ok

    the design is awesome! very slick! nice job 8P

    *I e-mailed you with lil’ bug-report :D

    Reply

  17. Ron

    I like the new design but I forgot to bookmark all the sites in your old blogroll. Now it’s gone. Sad face :(

    Reply

  18. alek

    I really miss the reference links. I think that links to the other blogs and sites were extremely useful. Hope that you will add them again. Why not expanding with more ;) .

    Reply

  19. Denis

    Hi Nick,

    Well done. The site is very contemporary looking.
    Very nice grid system and typography. Great work.

    Regards,
    Denis.

    Reply

  20. Abdelhamid

    I think the site became slower than before,isn’t it guys ?

    Reply

  21. Tanishq Dubey

    Very Good Design, but to report some bugs, the Viemo (or whatever video service) is displaying the time funny, some rainbow colors, and the full screen sometimes lags.

    I am using google chrome (latest version)

    Once again, great new design!

    Reply

  22. Jonathan

    Nice!! My iPhone 4s safari shutdown when I open the greyscalegorilla.com website.
    Does anyone have same problem?

    Reply

  25. Sam

    Hey nick, love the new design! Definitely works well, hope to keep seeing great content that really made this site great!

    Reply

  27. Simone Nucci

    Hey Nick,
    you did a really great work, i like your new look it’s so clean and intuitive!!!!

    Congratulation…. :-)

    Reply

  30. graham

    what font is this pls nick, it looks very nice and clean

    Reply

  32. Paaj

    It’s a great new design. I like the cleanliness. The smaller header is really nice and functional.
    I want to update my own site also to a new design and this example really exites me. Right now I have a site which is a combination of iWeb and Tumblr blogs. But it isn’t functional enough. This is WordPress right? I want to take the step to WordPress.

    Reply

  33. Godmil

    Nice and clean.
    I really like just going to the products page just to look at it, really nicely put together.

    Reply

  35. dan

    looks good. yeah, it was a pain looking for old tuts on the other side.

    Reply

  36. Jeff Briant

    took a good month but I played through every one of the older posts.. I wish I waited because hitting that “older posts” button 140 times was a little… tedious.

    Reply

  37. Joost Jordens

    Hi Nick,

    Few things I’ve noticed:

    Currently the list of catagories is enormous and feels unnecessary with the search bar and the header (top bar). Personally I don’t use categories on most sites with an exception for signalnoise.com. I can’t think of a ‘fix’ in your case ‘though’. Is there an option to group them?

    The space between an enter is huge in the comments. Not sure if this is on purpose.

    Maybe add a tiny tad more white to the top bar to make it stand out more. To me it blends to much with the black background.

    Cheers,

    Joost

    Reply

    • Joost Jordens

      EDIT: I noticed the typography is the same here in the comments as in your blog posts. Sorry.

      Reply

  39. Jate of JateDesigns

    Fantastic, clean design.
    This reminds me of when Abduzeedo changed their site, which was also for the better.
    Congrats on such a bold move; I know it’s hard to change something when you know it’s working, even if it’s for the better.

    Reply

  40. CAPSONWHILERENDERING

    Ugh, in Chrome everything goes blank before loading a different page. Doesn’t seem to do this in Firefox.

    Reply

  41. dennis

    pleas change the font, i can hardly read your blog!

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      Joshua

      The announcement of the new design brought ALOT of traffic putting stress on the server. Under normal server load the site will load MUCH faster then the old version. Especially after your browser does some caching.

      Reply

  43. Michael

    I’m new here but will definitely be a regular! Great stuff!! Is there a table of contents to view at a glance all the video titles?

    Reply

  44. Mike

    Design is minimalistic and looks great, though I would change text color to more black as it is hard to read it now.

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      Joshua

      Make sure you don’t have your brightness jacked up. This could make it hard to read it.

      Reply
    • The Gorilla

      Joshua

      Thales. Was this on PC or a Mac? I can’t seem to reproduce the issue on a Mac.

      Reply

  46. John

    Cool site Nick. I like the Categories panel on right side and minimalistic design.

    Great you.

    John

    Reply

  50. Matthias

    Hi Nick,
    congrats to the new page (it has changed, hasn’t it ;-) Nice outfit for great content.
    Greetings
    Matthias

    Reply

  51. M

    Hi Nick,
    I like the new design and fuctionality.
    But I miss the prominence of the header and the promo graphics on the sidebar that was there earlier, specially how greyscalegorilla was really loud, i think it looked very nice that way, just my opinion!

    Another thing to consider would be big BG images like faded views of 3d renders, something on the lines of http://www.troika.tv, but then again it won’t be as clean as its now.

    Best
    M

    Reply

  52. Beekeeper

    iam not sure you noticed or not, the image on all the post and even the videos are not centered, some extra padding (iam not sure what they call) on the right side.
    Your site is major inspiration for me, thanks for helped me in lot of things.

    bee.

    Reply

  54. Jérémie SIMON

    Bravo Nick !
    simple, élégant et performant…
    Translation :
    Bravo Nick !
    simple, elegant and powerful

    Reply

  56. Christian

    It’s very mean to use a font in a WAAAAY to small size and at the same time add a “-webkit-text-size-adjust:none” to practically all tags (style.css line 44), so no-one zoom up the size on Google Chrome and other webkit-browsers! Why was that put in the code?

    Please, remove that text size adjustment restriction and while you’re at it, go up from 12px to at least 14 or 15 pixels. Many of the people leaving comments complained about the illegible font size…

    Reply

  58. Ricardo

    Hi Nick,

    First, thanks for all the stuff I’ve learned with you. You are a constant inspiration.
    About the new look it’s just great. Sharp, simple and clean. I just noticed that older links in previous posts may not redirect you to the deserved URLs and instead to the homepage.

    Keep it up!

    Reply

  59. James

    Hey Nick.

    I loved your olds site – it was so clear and nice. I used to reference it as a site that is clear and easy to use.
    Not sure about this.
    Maybe it will grow on me!
    Just looks a bit corporate.
    Anyways just thought I’d leave some feedback.
    Thank you for you continiued hard work.

    James

    Reply

  60. Loga

    Nice clean code. But the comments template is a bit too simple for me.

    Reply

  62. William Morren

    Loving the redesign after the little adjustments you made.
    Good thing you’ve kept the double GreyScaleGorilla.

    Reply

  63. awesome sauce

    Hi Nick,

    Your improved site is nice. I agree with removing the categories bar, and instead just replacing this with your old links list.

    Also please create a greyscalegorilla message board. Your site is extremely popular but asking questions and actually interacting with the people on this site with the current format is extremely limiting and basically impossible. It’s setup so that Nick posts than heaps of people comment. Currently you and Chris are the only ones that have a voice. This site is not interactive besides once a month or so and 5 second projects are posted. Even then it’s awkward to try and communicate with the designers whom have posted projects.

    If you had a message board for people to post and ask questions to each other, users could be interacting and learning at a much more rapid and functional pace. Your site though very rich in content and awesome instruction, has hit a wall. People watch, say thanks, and leave.

    You could have the best motion design message board on the net. Please make this a reality.

    Thank you

    Reply

      • awesome sauce

        Hi Nick,

        Thank you for taking the time out to respond. Your website and content is second to none on the internet.

        I have visited your Facebook Page and pretty much the same types of problems exist. Yes, people can post on that wall instead of just you or Chris.

        However, that wall cannot be searched so even if decent answers or comments are given about a particular subject; they will just fall to the bottom of the wall and cannot be quickly referenced or bookmarked. Also scene files cannot be attached on a wall. So trouble shooting problems becomes awkward. Facebook pages or comment boxes do not replace a message board for collaboration and problem solving. Also a Facebook posting occupies a narrow area on the middle of the page which is squished to fill up a small box. Message boards allow for a much more fluid writing and viewing experience.

        I appreciate what you have done for Mograph and the high quality teaching and that you have provided. I sincerely believe that Maxon has benefitted from your contributions as well.

        I have no doubt that a GreyscaleGorilla message board would become wildly popular. This is in my opinion the last piece of the puzzle missing from GSG offering the go-to place for motion design.

        Please setup a message board, this will enable and streamline the possibility for your thousands of viewers to actually create a vibrant community.

        Thank you

        Reply

  64. Hindi

    Thanks very much for share your story with us. Your work is phenomenal, wonderful

    Reply

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  68. color codes

    Thanks for reminding me. I will get some of those back up somewhere.

    Reply

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