Our guide to the new Journalism.co.uk site design

Journalism.co.uk today relaunches with a new design offering clearer navigation, topical aggregation and a sharper focus on multimedia.

"As I'm sure most of our readers will agree, a revamp has been long overdue. Our aim with the new design has been to rationalise our proposition to readers and clients, improve navigation and make better use of imagery," founder and managing director of Journalism.co.uk John Thompson said.

What's new?

The new design helps to highlight the top news stories in the industry with a more visually-led homepage and news list.

Extended reading on subjects is now much easier thanks to the new "More on..." topic pages.



These pages aggregate content from across Journalism.co.uk on a given subject, providing a valuable resource for users to get up-to-date on the topical issues of the day, with instant updates as news breaks.

The new design also helps to showcase our increasing coverage of technology focused news and features, with handy quick-link buttons to tips and resources.



Navigation through the site is aided by the re-organised menu bar at the top, demonstrating Journalism.co.uk's wide reach of services across news, PR and jobs, in a succinct and manageable way.

The video and podcast player in the top right-hand-side of the homepage offers users an immediate multimedia fix when they arrive on the site, with the latest content available at the click of a button.

Below the news list users will find links to the editors' blog, which features daily tips and the app of the week for journalists, as well as curated content from across the web.



The next panel is dedicated to comment pieces from online publishing experts, which will be refreshed regularly to offer the latest opinion on the topical issues of the moment.



More feature-based content is located in the lower part of the homepage, including a new "Get the knowledge" panel showcasing the popular how-to guides, taking users step-by-step through the latest industry tools and providing wider online journalism skills.



It is therefore now easier to find helpful content – whether information on journalism courses, advice for freelance journalists or story ideas – to help you in your career as a journalist.

Redesigning the news site

Thompson deliberately sought out members of the original design team who worked on the pre-paywall version of Times Online (the 'lime" version), "which had particularly impressed me on its launch," he said.

"Jon Warden of Liquid Media One came on the horizon and it was clear from the outset that Jon, unlike any of the other designers I met, really understood the design demands of online news."

"He was also expert at navigating us through the jungle of competing commercial and editorial demands on the new design, and I believe we ended up with a credible result. We have achieved a broadsheet quality news site design, while still maintaining our own unique branding and the perfect combination of gravitas with style.

"Behind the scenes, we also had enormous help from our content management system (CMS) developer Tolan Blundell who, with great patience, has helped us implement what, under the bonnet, is quite a complex design and has steered us through many CSS and other coding nightmares over the past few weeks."

As always we are keen to hear your thoughts on the new design - feel free to email us at this address.

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