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Our New Look

You may have noticed a new look at Wordnik this morning … just in time for Dictionary Day!

our new logo!

We’re hugely excited about this update, which includes some fun things (like the Random Word link and our new Zeitgeist page).

One other important new thing: logged-in Wordniks now have profile pages. By default, they’re all set to “private,” but if you would like to share your browsing history and favorite words with the world, you can set your profile to “public.”

We’ve made a lot of changes in a very short time, so please do let us know (at feedback@wordnik.com) if you see something broken or missing. We’d really appreciate it!

We’ll be changing (well, adding, mostly) more new stuff in the coming days and weeks, so stay tuned!

9 thoughts on “Our New Look”

  1. Well, the technical redo is fine ; smooth, and well-executed. But, I liked the old design, at least definition-page presentation-wise. And etymology-page-wise. And page-layout-wise.
    Argh. So, the new design is a bit cute, a bit twittery/facebooky. Who knows, maybe this is what the People want. To me, you know what’s cool? This is cool:
    http://artflx.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/efts/dicos/woodhouse_test.pl?keyword=^Seriously,%20adv.
    Of course, that’s just Greek. Your old layout was also nice, with the quotes on the left, and stuff. Anyway, I came here despite the twitter and flickr noise before, not because of it. Besides it seems a bit forced, like glitter paint and LEDs on a sombrero.
    OK, so following on that, is it really necessary to blow up the word I’m looking up to skyscraper size? Now my co-workers can look over my shoulders and laugh because because I’ve had to look up the word “task” or “vocal.” (And they will laugh, believe me. “Hey, look at wordnerd! He’s lookin’ up “horse! Ha ha ha!”) I usually come here for etymologies, so it is a bit annoying to be hit in the head with the word form I’m starting from. If I didn’t know what the word meant, that would only compound my embarrassment. I’d probably just use dictionary.reference.com again, even though it takes way longer to type than wordnik.
    And what’s with the heart in wordnik? Was that there before? Did it just get larger? What does “w” hearts “Rdnik” mean, anyway?
    I do not heart the ‘w*rdnik’ with a heart where its ‘O’ goes.
    Anyway, thank you and good luck.

  2. I actually prefer the new layout, which is refreshing, and I especially like that the definitions, which I think is the most looked for information on each word, are now displayed at the upper left, where the eyes habitually fall first when reading.

    But requiring the user to visit another page to read all definitions and hear pronunciations is just… incredibly inconvenient, time-consuming and plainly not smart. I loathe m-w.com precisely because they play pronunciations in a pop-up window and the sound files load slow as hell.

    A little suggestion on the page design: Because the background is all white, the font slim, and the spacing sparse, it takes the reader a lot of effort to figure out where the text of a functional link starts and ends and also where each section of text begins and ends. Please add some borders or background color blocks to better delineate each section, and maybe use a bolder font (or fonts) for the menu bar texts.

    My attitude towards the new logo is quite “meh.” It sure is way better than the previous ones, but I have my issues with it. The heart and the “-nik” suffix together bring to mind the image of peaceniks, which is perhaps precisely what the Wordnik team intends — free love for and harmonious co-existence of all words, but, in my opinion, too politically rich for a dictionary site intended for the general audience. And somehow it feels like the logo for a cereal that has a lot of fiber and is good for the heart….

  3. I liked the old layout. the blue background was relaxing. This one looks too marketing-like but I’ll get used to it.

  4. The old design was almost perfect, very readable. This is a dictionary, not a fancy design site. It must provide _useful_ information in a very _accesible_ way.

    I hate the new design. The twitter stuff is almost useless, takes too much real estate and is too high in the window, making me scroll for the really useful stuff.

    Now, I have to click several times for the different definitions.

    Before, most of the useful information was in 1 screen. Now, I have to scroll up and down.

    I like minimalism, but here is not being useful. Now it takes longer to identify and locate what I am looking for in the screen. It is too flat in styles and colors.

    Why do I need to see word _that I typed in_ in font size 2000, taking so much real estate?

    I made Wordnik my default dictionary when I found it but, with this design, I will be using it only when I need a 2nd or 3rd reference.

    Bad, bad design for a dictionary.

    The heart thing, not my cup of tea either. But it does not affect usability.

  5. I have to agree with Jeff, Wazopia and Jose on the design; I liked almost everything about the previous site’s design better especially the front page/color scheme and logo. The new design leaves me cold.

  6. Seems like the design has been tweaked a bit since I last commented/ ranted. I love the way it is now — everything is clear and easy to find.

    I spend a lot of time lingering on sites that focus on design trends and am always bored by how lifeless the “grid” trend has made many of them. Too tidy and too neatly aligned everywhere. The predictably somewhat makes everything seem lost and eager to find its own proper place. The new Wordnik layout utilizes the grid principle but isn’t constrained by it; it has both clarity and subtle visual tension, which I like.

    Now, only if the logo can be improved a bit…. I still find the orange shaded heart more at home on the juice box of carrot-rich vegetable juice (probably an organic one with a hip name), and similar fonts are so trendy and overused these days, it’s bound to look dated a couple years from now.

    Oh, and big love for the new “Elsewhere on the web” section for definitions. I already regularly use many of the site to find better examples, definitions, and pronunciations for various words. This is a time saver for me.

  7. May I ask for a “word of the day” newsletter, please? Newsletters are old-fashioned, but it’s effective. I prefer to have my “word of the day” kind of thing in newsletter form (like Garner’s OUP usage newsletter!), because I always clear out my inbox but often not my rss reader. Because people tend to oversubscribe, unread rss feeds pile up so often that I think most of us have learned to live with it, meaning that “word of the day” often becomes “words of the week” or “words of the last three days.” And not everyone uses rss readers. So please consider the option. 🙂

  8. I’m sorry, but the older design was much more useful. I didn’t need any 2 seconds to get used to it or to learn where things were. Everything was at hand and on sight.

    The blue was also very pleasant. The new look and choice of colours is distracting, and that’s a big annoyance.

    And what’s with the small box for tweets? It’s one of the most useful features – how people actually use what we looked for *right now*, and particularly when writing short.

    Again, I’m sorry, I know you worked a lot on it and that it was a big step. Also I’m guessing that probably the excitement with the new layout wasn’t that unanimous among all at Wordnik – a change like this is usually controversial – but I just had to speak my mind on this.

    Congratulations on this very useful tool, anyway…

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