For this new installment of my Favourite Website Designs I picked GOOD, an online magazine that basically gives all their subscription money away to organizations. On a single website you have: good content, good design and a good cause, which makes the name pretty well chosen.
GOOD
An online magazine should be all about the content — it should be inviting and engaging, and allow the user to just wander through their pages and articles. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t look great: whether we like it or not, a beautiful website will always look more professional and credible. The design of the GOOD website puts the content forward, but doesn’t let you indifferent to the good design around it.
What I love
- How clean the design feels, even with lots of content in it.
- There are almost no decorative elements (not that it would be a bad thing) and the ones that there are are very subtle.
- The neutral colour palette with some hints of strong flat colour spots.
- The little comment boxes: the way they are positioned and coloured.
- The unusual but cute “Share” icon.
- The strong and distinct headings on the sidebar.
- The clean type and clear hierarchy.
What I would change
I would change very little on this site:
- I’m not sure about the rounded corners in the bottom of the articles boxes.
- Some of the ads (top and bottom) don’t fit the theme perfectly. They could either be better placed within the article’s text or have the same width as the page.
Conclusion
GOOD is one of those sites that when you first visit you think “Hmm, it looks so good, let me read something. Ah!, this sounds interesting”, and I suppose that’s the type of reaction most websites would like to get from their visitors.
Even though it may look “empty” in some cases, you can see that the design was well thought and that there was a careful attention to detail.
Do you agree?