Frank Assessment From a Longtime Fan and User...
This is one of the most graphically incoherent homepages I've seen in a while - so sad that it's Luminous Landscape. It's what we call in the design world sometimes..."the jumble sale". Kevin I don't know why you were tasked with this - and why you chose "the Swellfire Team" but you have not pushed LL forward - only backward.
You cannot say that you are interested in functionality in your "desire for progress" soley - you must first and perhaps foremost consider the visual and graphic impact in the development of a new site. This is in one important sense...a visual medium. You did not apparently consider this well, and neither did the Swellfire guys (you only need take one look at their homepage - to realize they are the worst people for the job. I'm not sure if this page is Wordpress...looks like it. Wordpress is your enemy here - and you didn't even realize it.
LuLa has been for a long time one of the best sites of this type - and I really never had much of a complaint. It was graphically cohesive, clear typography, color work, all the way around. Maybe the functionality of the article database...not alphabetized once you go into a subgroup...and some other aspects...but minor in the scheme of things. That said, like DP Review...it had a very clear graphic personality. Now this is gone and what your left with is like something generically produced for a small Winnipeg copy-shop e.g. - just like every other bad Wordpress type ready-made.
We need less mediocrity in the world and LuLa has stood apart from that. What you have done Kevin however, is the difference between some amateur snapshot of a farmyard water trough and one of Michael Reichman's images of the Pelouse, you have made it more mediocre...visually. This is not the way forward.
(I would not normally put so fine a point on it...but it is so incredibly disappointing...I don't even look at the home page anymore)
Well what can I say. It is my site and based on all the comments about the previous site this is a huge move in the right direction. We have had tons of positive remarks about the new site. Only a few like yours that take issue. The time is to move forward and that is what we are doing. The Swellfire Team is a good team and took our ideas and executed them well. The site is much easier to read. For those that visit only once and while they now can see home page images they have missed. Once the video portion is complete it will totally integrate our video content into the site. The logic of the home page keeps the most recent articles at the top and the other articles move downward and all articles from today to day one are available on the article page. There is a search function now that will find articles you may be looking for. As stated in our intro article a very cool advanced search function coming. We now have a new section called Rantatorials. Related articles is a new feature that allows you to visit other related past articles. If you don't call this moving forward than I am not sure what moving forward is.
I did consider typography, color, functionality, navigation and a ton of other things, all very carefully. And, over the years we have had hundreds of emails asking us to get rid of white type on black. Readers wanted larger images in the articles. They wanted to see larger home page images. All of this is now part of the NEW Luminous-Landscape. Everything we did was a move forward. It
s shame you can't see that.
This is the new site. That is all there is to it. It is now a platform to grow and offer more for our readers. If you don't like it than so be it. Maybe you can find a site offering more content in a design you like.
Mediocrity by the way was our old site. And, it does not enter into the vocabulary of Michael or myself.
Too bad you feel the way you do.
Kevin Raber
