A New Visual Design Language for BBC Online

I think given the number of comments on the Editors Blog for the BBC news website that the implementation of GVL3 for the news site has been a disastrous fail.

I really enjoyed reading this post.

I’ve always rated the BBC’s online offering and I came across the GVL last year, reading with great interest.

I worried that with the beeb’s budget cuts, the website would suffer dramatically – already there is reduced quality in the copy on the news section, with spelling and grammer mistakes occurring more often – however it seems they’re still pioneering, and this pleases me greatly.

Your post however has worried me, in that I’m currently working on a site that uses Verdana almost exclusively… looks nice enough to me though!

There is no doubt that the work coming out of this project is to a high standard and the method of sharing ‘work in progress’ will certainly help the rollout and cushion the user’s transition.

However the aspect of this work that I find really exciting is how a relatively small team has managed to motivate and launch this project. Selling the need for good design in to an organisation, as large as the Beeb is a massive achievement in itself. To win the necessary support and budget to deliver this project must have taken the plight of UX Design through to the top ranks. So I’d like to extend my congratulations to the team involved in getting it off the ground and to the execs who backed it.

Great stuff, especially their work with the grid. Just a shame they’re sticking to a fixed-width …

Stuff like this gets me really excited, wherever the BBC heads the rest of the public sector follows closely behind. As a local government webbie that’s good news for me.

I’m so glad the BBC are pushing the boundaries and not settling for the improvements they’ve already made.

I’ve always felt the existing style of the header and navigation looked quite amateur and wasted space for the sake of a rather ugly gradient. The improved navigation will hopefully encourage people to hang around and explore more content: than they likely do at the moment.

Great post, and WOOHOO looks like IKEA are hogging all the Verdana these days :D

As usual on BBC design projects, I’m keen to see how this plays out – and also how they intend to roll it out across all the platforms. It’s a job that must just get bigger and bigger. Liking what they’ve done so far with this new stuff though.

I look forward to seeing this rolling out across the BBC sites.

Interesting to see the official BBC icon set adopting a custom ‘Share This’ style icon.