Software Recommendations New Site Design

Question

My name is Paweł, I’m a product designer at Stack Exchange. I’m super happy for you, because the process of graduation is about to be concluded! Congratulations to all of you!

New Design

The new design comes with a few perks. It will give you your own unique theme that reflects your topic, culture & community. This will help brand your site as unique, even while you share common elements with other sites that show you are part of a bigger Stack Exchange family.

Design Concept

Creating design for technology-related sites is tough. Why? Because we already have plenty of them so it's hard to come up with something original AND technology topics usually don't have any physical thing that we can mimic in design or treat as a main theme. Sometimes it has to be very abstract, sometimes it has to be just simple.

So what could be design inspiration for this Community? My first thought was software box (hint for younger users: yes, we used to buy software in physical store and it was usually packed like that). Then I thought about Windows' Software Installing Process. But I realised those elements are symbolic only for me. For other users it can be something different. So I decided to go with a simple & readable design. Nothing fancy, but original enough to distinguish it from other sites and to let it have own "personality".

You also told me what you expect from a new design is simplicity and readability.

What about logo?

• How to show Software? Disk? Box? Piece of code? Window? Cliché...
• How to show Recommendations? Stars? Some sort of diploma with testimonials? Again - cliché...

I think of your community as a group of guides, as people who can tell me what exact tool do I need. You point me in the direction I need to follow. So I picked two symbols: cog (as a metaphor for software, tool, program or app) and compass (as a metaphor for guidance).

But first of all simplicity.

So here it is!

Color Scheme

SWAG

Here are some examples of how it can be used elsewhere to strengthen the visual identity.

T-shirts

Stickers

Overall Site Design

Here’s what you were waiting for…

Home

Question

We believe the design and branding work very well for this community. It’s unique and captures the right mood. We’d love to hear your feedback, and if it proposes no major design changes, we’ll launch the new site design very soon.

Answer 1

For a site with such an abstract, hard-to-design-for topic, you've done great. A few minor nitpicks:

1. The usercard feels a little lopsided:

   

   Seems like there should be more whitespace on the left border.

2. The black text for '0 answers' feels a little harsh:

   

   Could it be lightened a little bit? A nice dark grey might look better.

3. It's hard to tell in the slightly aliased screenshot, but it looks like the badges are rounded rectangles?

   

   This seems like a great opportunity to use a (simplified?) version of the cog/gear logo. I can't throw together a mockup right now, but I think it could be done without looking too messy.