GEL (Global Experience Language) is the user experience and visual design language for designers creating the next generation of digital services for the BBC. This blog aims to follow the progress of this ambitious initiative. Learn More…
Our site launched in July 2010 with the purpose of showcasing the BBC’s online, television and radio content arising from the London Olympic and Paralympic Games. We’ve tweaked a few things since then but now, with the arrival of 2012 and the pace increasing by the day, we’re going for the line with a bold new design.
Bold it may be, but at what cost? A continuation of the ‘visual first’ approach first introduced on the new home page, information is presented in such a way that is overly fussy and confusing, with content feeling lost and disorderly.
Jessica Shiel, Product Manager for Social Publishing Services at BBC Future Media:
It’s been more than five years since the first few BBC blogs were set up in Movable Type and in that time the software has hosted up to four hundred services at any one time… Today I am announcing the launch of the first blog, Writersroom, which sits on the new [iSite] platform and represents a fresh design.
Seeing as this is the season of goodwill, and for the sake of completeness, it’s time to add the Doctor Who website to GELLED. This was the first site designed against the GEL guidelines; probably as they were being rapidly developed and iterated upon. In fact, GEL wouldn’t be officially unveiled for another two months after the launch of this site.
This would explain why this site isn’t a great implementation of the visual language (Helvetica! Bold! Large!), but seeing as I’ve posted far worse examples, it seems a shame to continue with the exclusion!
Phil Fearnley, General Manager for News & Knowledge:
The homepage occupies a unique position within BBC Online: though BBC Online is a distinct service, and the homepage a single product within it, editorially the page can show off the breadth of content we make available on the web. But showing this breadth has been our perennial challenge… The new BBC homepage marks a departure from the way we’ve approached this challenge until now and introduces a new, more visual approach to showing off our content on the web.
I’ve tried to live with it but can’t say I’m a fan. Whilst I agree the homepage needed rebalancing to showcase more content from across BBC Online, the ‘visual first’ approach actually diminishes the content presented. I find it hard to grok what’s available through a forest of interactivity; carousels, sliders, draws, arrows etc.
The most interesting aspect of the new homepage however; a demonstration of some of the ways GEL will be evolving over the next year, in particular around the masthead.
Fantastic update to one of the major sites on BBC Online. If you’re interested in the motivation behind the update, and how the new design was realised, I encourage you to read Senior Designer Melanie Seyer’s extensive write-up on the project. More posts like this please!
Oh, and the best bit? The return of the iconic BBC weather symbols, redrawn to work in a number of different sizes.
The BBC has long had websites aimed at helping audiences and licence fee payers understand various aspects of what it does as an organisation. Some of these worked well and were well maintained, others had become out of date. In all, there were around fifty of them. The connections between them were very limited. There was nowhere to go to gain a broad understanding of how the BBC works or what it does. The sites varied enormously in look and feel.
The About the BBC site was therefore rationalised and combined with other corporate sites that remain relevant. Content now falls within five broad categories: Inside the BBC, Media Centre, Partners and Suppliers, Careers and Help and Feedback. GEL was useful tool for enduring this broadened site remained coherent, simple and focused. Unfortunately, the Careers site was redesigned prior to this reorganisation, and although it shares the same visual language, is clearly different from the other parts of this new site.
