I’m very impressed by the redesign of The Guardian; they’ve managed to pull off the complicated feat of having a lot of information and not losing that information in a morass of boxes and links.

The design, based on a six-column grid, actually reminds me quite a lot of The Onion, although I think it’s even less busy. This article talks about the design process for The Onion; I think it’s had a slight design refresh since this was written, but it’s still an interesting read.

Explanation of The Guardian’s design process comes from editor-in-chief Emily Bell and creative editor Mark Porter, who says:

The Guardian design philosophy values function first and aesthetics second, but you will also notice a fresh look, with new typography and a more varied colour palette. Along with the more dramatic use of still and moving images, these innovations aim to bring to the web experience a new expression of the design values we have established in our award-winning printed products.

I think they’ve succeeded in their aim; I think this new design is simple, clever and refreshing. Reader reaction has been mostly positive, but I think even the complainers will change their opinions shortly; some people have an automatic negative reaction to change.

In terms of code, this is a great example of clean, semantic, strict XHTML; presentational divs are few, with news items marked up with the more semantically sensible lists. In short, this is a standard bearer for modern web development. Congratulations to everyone involved.

Update: Just found this post by Nik Silver on the technical decisions and challenges of the redesign. Interesting stuff.