I was involved in a major redesign of the BBC News Website - when it went form a sigle column approach to the current two-dimensional layout.
What is interesting about Andy's designs is that he's basically taken the current thinking in 'modern' news website design (two dimensions) back to the single column layout. I think this is a fundamental flaw in his design.
People come to a news front page to see the editor's prioritization of the days news agenda. With a single column approach it is very difficult to editorially prioritize stories of similar importance. It works for blogs because they don't have an editorial prioritization as they usually sort by chronological order.
Two-dimensional layouts, like NY Times and BBC, allow for editors to give several articles (perhaps a politics story, a business story and a sport story) equal visual importance. If you have a mainstream appeal you need to be able to give different audiences something of relevance.
What is interesting about Andy's designs is that he's basically taken the current thinking in 'modern' news website design (two dimensions) back to the single column layout. I think this is a fundamental flaw in his design.
People come to a news front page to see the editor's prioritization of the days news agenda. With a single column approach it is very difficult to editorially prioritize stories of similar importance. It works for blogs because they don't have an editorial prioritization as they usually sort by chronological order.
Two-dimensional layouts, like NY Times and BBC, allow for editors to give several articles (perhaps a politics story, a business story and a sport story) equal visual importance. If you have a mainstream appeal you need to be able to give different audiences something of relevance.