Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

more than a fresh coat of paint

The other project that’s dominated my time for the last two months just went live last night.

azcentral.com, Web site of The Arizona Republic, launched an extensive redesign, and the result is a completely new look, along with a few new features.

I was contracted in late July to work on the main index/subindex pages of the Entertainment section, the calendar results and detail pages and azcentral@night. (I’ll add a link to the latter when it debuts tonight.) The main site “look” already had been established in-house, and part of my job was to propogate that style into those inside pages.

Functionality-wise, I think they’ve done a great job with revamping the Calendar search. And I’m not just saying that because I helped with that section. I genuinely think it’s more usable and more informative than the previous Calendar, with search results displayed in an easy-to-read tabular format, sortable search results column headers and location-specific “Make a Night of It” sidebars with nearby restaurants and nightclubs.