Last Monday, March 16, washingtonpost.com swapped out their standard #0c4790 for a glorious #d2b309. For those of you that haven’t memorized the entire RGB hex code, they swapped blue for gold — and we’re not talking Olympic gold here. #
“Wow, washingtonpost.com has a really, really gold nav bar now…,” Chris Avore, a consultant from D.C., tweeted and Matt Ortega, of the District, said it reminded him of a gold grill. #
So why were people so creeped out by the gold navigation? #
In discussion about the gold navigation a couple of themes permeated the conversation: #
On Faster Forward, one commenter took this conversation one step closer to where it needs to be. #
“So the gold bar is an advertising thing? I figured it was just the webmonkeys playing around with the design. I guess that, as an advertisement, it isn’t working.” #
Washingtonpost.com is a known innovator. The team there is constantly trying new technologies to distribute their media. So I ask, how far is too far when it comes to the revenue push that is supporting this innovation? Why is it ok for the journalists to innovate, but not the sales staff that supports this innovation? #
on Mar 22nd, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Glad to see LMedia alive again! With the gold bar, I agree it didn’t connect well enough with the ad to the right. I probably saw the nav twice before making the connection, and Carlos was the same way. But it did make me notice for the first time that Going Out Guide was in the nav. Whether that was there before or not, I have no idea. On the business vs. editorial part, I think I’m fine with selling navs as long as it doesn’t hurt usability. The Apple ad on the Pitchfork redesign was pretty sweet.