Sign in with Facebook
Did You Notice Something a Little Different?
UPDATE: Thanks for all the feedback! For those of you who were having issues with blurriness, we have good news: we pushed out an update this afternoon that improves the sharpness of the font for users who were affected. We’re monitoring all the comments and will keep you posted on any further updates.
If you’re a frequent visitor to Goodreads, you've probably noticed a few tweaks we’ve made to the fonts and colors on the desktop site today. Our goal with these small-but-important changes was to consolidate and refresh our visual styles and lay the groundwork for some design improvements that we’re planning in the future.
What’s different?
To enhance the readability of text on Goodreads, we’ve adopted two new open-source fonts. Lato, our sans-serif font, was designed by Warsaw-based designer Łukasz Dziedzic (“Lato” means “Summer” in Polish). Merriweather, our serif font, was created by Eben Sorkin and was designed to be pleasant to read on screens.
To make it easier to scan the page for information you need, we’ve touched up and modernized the design of common page layout elements like section headers, tabs and links.
To simplify and modernize our visual design, we’ve reduced the number of link colors we use, removed gradients from buttons and the site navigation, and applied a more harmonious color palette to interactive elements such as buttons, stars, and links.
Before:
Comments Showing 501-550 of 3,113 (3113 new)
Color makes my eyes water. Pretty but hard to read. And i have to super zoom in to read
Please give an option between the new and old version! It would be very nice. Honestly, I prefer the older version. It's just a matter of habit.
Crochet Buddies wrote: "I like the changes. Don't listen to the nay-sayers."Yes, don't listen to the majority of your users! You want to stay in business, do everything opposite of what they say they like!
*eye roll*
On my main feed - why aren't the links (to see status update, reader profile etc) the same teal color they are everywhere else? In the feed they're just a bolder font? It makes them harder to find as well.
I like the new colours and profile, but the font is difficult to read. It's a bit on the small side and comes across as fuzzy to me. Might just be because my eyesight is bad to start with, though.
The new font makes the text difficult to read ):
My eyes! My eyes! I really don't like the font. It may be new and fancy but it's difficult to read. Again, no.
I like it, but i still wish they added the 1/2 star option.
I guess screen size is a key here. I am on my laptop and don't have a huge monster sze monitor. Zooming in every time just for GR is a pain. NOT COOL.
The layout + colors are great, but this font is extremely hard to read :(
Steven wrote: "If you're looking to make things more consistent, and you feel that style is the way to do this, why wouldn't you poll existing customers/users and get a feel for what they'd want to see? While som..."Direct feedback and user research is absolutely a part of our process, and we appreciate all of the comments we've received so far.
I might be part of the minority, but I like the changes in color and the new headers; they do look more modern. However, I agree with others about the font. The serif font is especially hard to read.
MrsJoseph wrote: "Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Yes, and I hate it. This is horrible. Please return to the previous version."My eyes are killing me. This font is atrocious."
It is. My eyes hate it, I hate it.
I hate the new font, it's very difficult to read and also all the small t- and f -letters are missing the upper part when you write in the text. So I say no to this change, please revert back to the old one.
It's hard for me to read now, I don't like it at all, my eyes are bleeding.
Barry wrote: "There should absolutely be an OPTION to revert to the original layout."YES! Thank you!
I'm a web designer and developer and your fonts are seriously TOO SMALL.
Steven wrote: "Crochet Buddies wrote: "I like the changes. Don't listen to the nay-sayers."Yes, don't listen to the majority of your users! You want to stay in business, do everything opposite of what they say ..."
Lol Steven, exactly. Sounds like a great business plan doesn't it ;)
you can't even tell if thing are bold or not ( for me )
bold not
The layout is fine, the text in the newsfeed is fine. But the serif font in the message boards (like this one right here) is not friendly to the eyes. It makes the text feel crowded.
The serif font is better, the sans serif font is terrible. Maybe worse than terrible. Don't you people test anything?
Leah wrote: "The layout + colors are great, but this font is extremely hard to read :("I feel the same way. I can't read this font, plus it's too small.
Mostly I like it, if the font could be just slightly bigger, that'd be nice! One thing that I'd love to be changed, is to pick what kinds of things you can sort in the bookshelves. Like, if all the information about a book, title, publisher, publication date, could be pulled from the books pages, and we could have it as an option to add it or not, that'd be a really great feature! I have over 6000 books on my TBR pile, and I'd love it if I could sort by pub date!
I don't mind the color so much, but the text does kind of hurt the eyes a little. I think Goodreads should have an option to revert back to the old version, or if not that, then I think it should be an option to customize it to where some people can keep the old version if they want, but others can change the color if they don't like it, or the font. I would honestly prefer to switch back to the old version, in all honesty, or at least have the option to change the font.
Unfortunately these changes aren't really improving "usability". Actually, it's made the site pretty unreadable on my end: I'm having the same problem reading the font as others who've posted before me. It's causing me to squint and giving me a headache. Most of the letters are blurry or not fully formed (I can't even see a line crossing the "t", for instance, and the tops of the smallcase letters are dotted all the way across), particularly when at the font size used for these comments. The other changes I can adapt to, but this font... I can't really read it. Not like the old one, which was perfect. Meaning I won't be using this site as much because I can't use a site that continuously induces headaches and aching eyes. :S
The font is effing hard to read. ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL OUR EYESIGHT?Also - the font is sort of glitchy - some parts of the letters are simply missing.
And the font gets blurry if magnified.
Pardon me, but
HAVE YOU GUYS GONE NUTS?
Louisa wrote: "Mostly I like it, if the font could be just slightly bigger, that'd be nice! One thing that I'd love to be changed, is to pick what kinds of things you can sort in the bookshelves. Like, if all t..."
Have you ever tried editing your column headings? You can do this on any bookshelf, and pub date is an option :) At the top of the My Books page, click on "Settings" (it's next to the search bar) and you'll get a big box with all available column headers.
The font is unpleasant and difficult to read.
It's not just the font. The background is too white. You can't have it on the computer. Any decent web master knows that :/
IT HURTS TO READ ITIT HURTS TO READ IT
IT HURTS TO READ IT
GO BACK TO THE OLD
Emily wrote: "Direct feedback and user research is absolutely a part of our process, and we appreciate all of the comments we've received so far."Oh, I must have missed the polls or something. Weird, I'm on here all day every day at work.
More colours, more childish. It's awful, I dont want "a modern look" and I don't need it. I don't want Goodreads to look like some Tumblr page.And the most important, it is more difficult to read. Very bad change.
I want something classic, readable, with few colours, contrast between the background and the text but the background shouldn't be totally white, a pale color maybe. And that green for linkable elements... bad done.
Sorry, I think no many changes are necessary and with this change I can't remember any of them.
Did you have any actual usability and accessibility experts test these fonts? They're HORRIBLE.
I don't mind it that much, but the new font is not an improvement. It is indeed harder to read. Why don't you focus on adding a reread button instead of changing something that works?
M'rella wrote: "It's not just the font. The background is too white. You can't have it on the computer. Any decent web master knows that :/"Exactly - instant migraine!
So it looks great for mobile and tablets, but is unreadable for PC....my eyes can't take the strain! On Feedback they said there's a rendering issue so at least it is hopefully just a glitch.
BRING BACK THE OLD FONT. I LIKE THE OLD USER PAGES WITH SQUARE PHOTOS
I am siding with the font haters. I feel that it's harder to read and it also doesn't have the same feel that I got from the old one. This is one of my favorite sites and I would love for the font to change back.
This font was an insane choice for any site, much less one people are going to spend a lot of time reading on, what were you thinking? It's extremely difficult to see. I can tell that many, many people are complaining and I'm guessing they don't normally have vision problems, but for vision accessibility you get a giant ZERO grade. It's impossible. I've been begging FOR YEARS for the app to stop using the tiny font in so many of the fields, it makes it unusable, so they added more locations where it's used. Now the main site is unusable too. You're driving me away completely. Please fix it! Function function function!
I liked the font at first... and I try to keep an open mind on updates but honestly, after looking around on the site it's blurry. I have good eyesight so it's not a MAJOR issue for me but it definitely affects readability for me. If it affect my eyesight, I can't image what it does to other uses with more eyesight problems :/ When I read the font what happens is it's as if there are two parallel blurred lines from the top of the letter to the bottom of the letter. So I have to squint, and that is starting to hurt my eyes. I zoomed in which got rid of the issue, but having to zoom in is a pathetic fix which, not to mention kills my resolution.
Meh. I don't understand why things like this are being changed when the functionality of the website needs to be greatly improved? And the android app REALLY needs some work. It can only perform the most basic of operations with shelves and news feed. I can't view anything in listopia, questions or groups with the android app... which is a HUGE chunk of website functionality.
It just makes me wonder, because making pointless changes like this is just dumb.
Update for everyone on this page of the comments: as Erin said above, we have a font rendering issue in a few browsers that we are working on. I will update with any news!
One thing I d dislike is the linking of the user names looks like they aren't links or clickable, however they still are. The color for those was changed to black and I liked being able to differentiate different posts by link color and some friends have hearts in their name which was nice when it showed red of a heart too. Otherwise so far I sort of like it.
I just noticed my profile pic.Why are the icons not standardized all of the sudden? I don't want my profile picture to be round. It looks like my Google account. I selected that particular picture for my icon because it was a RECTANGLE. Be consistent, GR! Keep all the icons same shape.
This font is very hard to read. It looks like the pixels along the top of each line of text is missing. Everything feels very small and blurry. Is there an option to revert back to the old font?(In typing this response in the text box, the tops and cross lines of t's and f's are just missing. These two letters look like l's with a hook at the bottom of the letter. )
The new fonts looks great but i think is a bit.... small; skinny; Is more pleasant but is seems more blurry and is harder to read a text more than two three lines...
Think that needs to be more bold or bigger or i don't know... needs something...