More recently, the blog network has taken on another new look.  While the latest redesign has kept a number of elements from August’s look, quite a bit has changed, and not all of it for the better.

The first thing you notice when you visit the new site is the revamped ‘network’ bar that links to all the TechCrunch websites.  Although located in almost the same place as last time, the background has been turned black, making it much more prominent.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and might help convince people to visit other parts of the network.  However, I think the black stands out so much that it draws your eye away from the main content.  It unnecessarily overpowers the rest of the website.

In addition to making the network bar more obvious, the large banner advert has been moved into the space next to the site logo.  This has meant that size of the logo has been reduced to make way for the advert.

The website homepage now includes three promo items along the top of the main content.  While this makes it easy to jump to what the TechCrunch editors rate as important content, the placement of an advert next to the three boxes first made me think the whole bar was one big advert.  After a few visits, I finally realised that it actually showed content, although nothing I couldn’t get from just reading down the page.

Another change to the homepage has been the reduction in width of the article excerpts and provision of a number of tabbed boxes listing active and recent entries.  These boxes used to live beneath the 125×125 pixel advert blocks on the far right hand site.

Overall I think this design is a serious step backwards for the website.  They’ve taken what was a very clean and easy to read design and cluttered it up with adverts.  The more space-efficient top bar including advert and logo now has less white space, but is just crowded.  The promo bar is badly designed, making it seem like one big advert.  The reduced width of the actual content and increased number of adverts on the right hand side just makes the site seem even more cluttered.  I don’t think they could fit any more stuff in if they tried.

Hopefully next time they do a revamp, they’ll go back to the short-lived clean and consistent design across all their sites.

You can see the new design vs old design from the screenshots below. Although the old screenshot comes from a different site on the TechCrunch network, you can still get a good idea of the changes.

No matter what I did, I couldn’t think of anything.

The next day, I came across an article on Spoonfed Design with tips on how to avoid designer’s block.  At least next time I suffer from the block, I can try and find a way around it.

In the end, I managed to put together a design I’m quite proud of – and hopefully it’ll see the light of day sometime over the next month or two.

This strikes me as a great idea – not only could it save money by just having one brand instead of 200, but it could help people recognise the work that government does.

After reading the article, I decided to take a look at branding used by our government here in the UK.  I surprised to learn about the sheer scale of central government and the huge number of brands in use.

The UK Government is comprised of around 45 departments & ministries (such as the Department for Transport and HM Treasury).  It also has approximately 72 executive agencies – these are organisations that have a degree of autonomy but are still linked to a particular department (such as the Food Standards Agency, Office of Fair Trading and the Crown Prosecution Service).  In addition to these, there are at, last count, 827 Non-Departmental Public Bodies (source: Cabinet Office, 2007).  These are agencies that are sponsored by government to deliver a particular public service such as the Environment Agency, the various arts councils and the British Potato Council.  You can find lists of the various departments / agencies on wikipedia (1 & 2).

It should be pointed out that this is just central government – it does not include local government (council councils etc), or the regional governments of Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland (or their associated public bodies).  Furthermore; it does not include organisations such as the Police, Fire department or the NHS.

A large number of these organisations have their own branding – that’s nearly 1,000 different corporate images.  The amount of money spent developing; maintaining and re-developing these brands must be astronomical.

The cabinet is regularly re-shuffled, which sometimes brings with it department splits, mergers, disbanding and creation.  In the last few reshuffles for example, the Department for Constitutional Affairs merged with some parts of the Home Office to create the Ministry of Justice; the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) was split in half, becoming the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS); the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) was created; and the Office of Deputy Prime Minister became the Department for Communities and Local Government.  Quite a few changes!

With each of these changes, an old brand has been retired, and new brands created.  Gone are the Department for Constitutional Affairs, Department for Education and Skills, and the Office of Deputy Prime Minister.  Now we have five new brands in government.

If the Government just had one brand – “HM Government” or “UK Government”, with just one logo, one typeface, one style, the amount of money that could be saved during each reshuffle could be huge.

Now I’m not suggesting that we replace all 944 brands with just one – that would be a bit draconian, however, a substantial slimming down of brands within central government makes a lot of sense.  What do you think?