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 951-1,000 of 3,113 (3113 new)
ATTENTION: I took another screenshot of how broken the font is for some of us. This is what a book's page looks like.http://postimg.org/image/5wnyrkrad/
Seriously, I cannot read any of the links or ISBN.
The design of the profiles is not even aesthetically pleasing. The font size in my profile is now very small and doesn't' even take all the space allotted to it, while the book titles are now bold and HUGE. WTH?
You're right, these are small-but-important changes and are good. (Love the blue)
1. This is NOT in any way "accessibility friendly." The basic functions of a website are functionality and stickiness. These changes do not enhance functionality. For anyone with a vision deficit, the font and link color changes decrease functionality. (And don't tell me folks with low vision don't read -- and buy -- books. You don't want to have that argument with me.) 2. It's ugly, and there's nothing unique or interesting about it. If everything looks the same, nothing stands out.
Whoever designed this mess didn't spend much time actually using it or they (and I assume more than one person was involved in making this mess) would realize it's a font/color scheme more for websites that expect the user to spend a short time and retain nothing than for a site that allegedly wants users to contribute content and use as a resource.
Christ, I thought my graphics card was dying, this mess is so small and blurry.
Stephen wrote: "ATTENTION: I took another screenshot of how broken the font is for some of us. This is what a book's page looks like.http://postimg.org/image/5wnyrkrad/
Seriously, I cannot read any of the links..."
Oh my...that is really hard to read...
Not a fan of the font at all, its hard to read, the letters look blurry, or like they were written with a pen that's running out of ink....
Please make the fonts a bit bigger. It's really hard for me to read it like this, especially after a long day at work.
The serif font doesn't render well on my screen. It looks blotchy, like the ink was smeared.
Emily: I'm using Firefox 42.0, and yes, the font is really bad. The only way I can make it readable is to blow up my text size to huge proportions, and even when it's huge the font has lots of thick blotches is in. Lowercase a's look terrible.
Isabella wrote: "I hadn't really noticed, but I like it. Although it doesn't really matter does it? No matter how many people hate it GR isn't going to change it back."Sadly true. Like other websites I could mention, it really is a losing battle most of the time.
Please bring back the offwhite/sepia background.
Danielle (Danniegurl) wrote: "Please bring back the offwhite/sepia background."
Ditto this!!!!
Did you happen to check the My Books page (and others, but just looked there now). Thin, tiny titles, author names, etc.! Feels like I'm reading a contract's fine print here. (That being for the sans font, which may possibly be excusable at a larger size and bold, maybe, as the serif one seen here for example is just awful whatever you do with it.)Also, did the part of the progress bar showing how much is left (the rest to 100%, I mean) blend so much with the background before? Barely noticeable now, and don't think it was quite like that.
The red/orange color used for the star ratings is very hard on the eyes... the gold color from before was so much nicer. I guess the font is "ok" but it's definitely not better... for me it is harder to read.
Let me guess...the genius that designed this mess doesn't wear bifocals.
Stephen wrote: "Note: I'm going to takes a screenshot of this message, I'll upload it in a forthcoming message. I don't know if the screenshot will "capture" the blotchy text and then upload it in picture form, or..."I looked at it in IE 11 and the "i" and "t" look pared away to the thinnest line possible, but other letters are abnormally thick (l, k, P, h, r, e). No real difference between the a & s for me.
Why change something that was working perfectly??? Crazy!!
Nvm, looked at profile pages too and like others pointed out, wth is that? Again, feels like I'm reading a contract's fine print anywhere, and just leaves empty space for no reason.
I actually really love this. It's so clean and pretty now. Can we get a new design and a total make over to the creative writing section? We should have live group chats and stuff. That would be great.
Like the clean look, but everything seems smaller than before. Too small for me. (using chrome)Also please make the font bigger, I have trouble reading with this font style. It seem blurry and too thin. Even when I zoom in it still does not work with my sight.
In general this change is not the best for people with sightproblems, I am getting a headache and eye pain due to the changes.
Don't know what it is suppose to look like, but my font is now smaller & harder to read. I actually went to change the zoom on my computer to see if it had changed the size, but was still at 100%.
Can you make it a bit larger? Please?
I like it, I came on and automatically i was like ''preeeettyyy'' :D
Okay, I thought everyone was being overly dramatic, but I've been posting here, taking screenshots, and reading the comments to on this page...and my eyes really are starting to literally hurt. So, yeah, GR is actually pain-inducing at the moment.
The new font looks broken on my laptop. I thought something was wrong at first. It's practically unreadable; I hope there will be an option to change back.
Yyyeah, pretty much what everyone else is saying - the redesign is lovely, but the serif font is horribly crinkly, blurry and generally unreadable.
I like it! At first I thought it made it harder to read, but then I got used to it.
It looks ok, but I'd rather have half stars and a reread option!
Reading comments is OK, but reading a book blurb, the new font makes it very hard to read.Really think you need to get a large range of people to try out these changes before you spring them on members, and I don't just mean gr users in the Feedback group. People who aren't used to the site and see if they can find things easily.
One of the major things I noticed was the author name link is now black. If I was new, I would have no clue that this was a link. I'm not one of those people that try and click on everything.
Don't hate the new teal colour but I find it much harder on the eyes. What do the less sighted think? I remember they were upset the last time you tried to change things.
I'm going to ask this, and I mean this sincerely. Was somebody drinking when they picked these colors? Because that's the only thing I can come up with. They're seizure inducing. Please change it back.
Nikki wrote: "Okay... so for me, the wonky missing-parts-of-letters issue is fixed, but now I'm seeing italics almost literally everywhere -- wherever there's a serif font that isn't a larger size or bold, it's ..."Hey Nikki - what browser are you using? Could you post a screenshot or send it to support at goodreads dot com?
"Our approach was simple: Improve the usability of the site and give it a cleaner, more modern look, while preserving the familiar feel of Goodreads—a unique home for readers."Improve?! You must be joking! There's no other explanation for callin these updates an improvement!
Stephen wrote: "ATTENTION: I took another screenshot of how broken the font is for some of us. This is what a book's page looks like.http://postimg.org/image/5wnyrkrad/
Seriously, I cannot read any of the links..."
The section with the details is absolutely ridiculous! Entire characters are missing, letters and numbers. If you need backup, you got it!
I'm sorry, I try not to complain about site changes (mostly because it's an absolutely worthless thing to do), but this is really awful. The background is too white. The font is too small. It hurts my eyes to look at for longer than a few minutes at a time. And this is a website about BOOKS.
Fix this. Or at least offer alternatives, because the amount of time I spend on this site is going to dramatically decrease if it stays the way it is.
(And frankly, that's what I expect.)
text is still to small... not bold enough... .. how bout you make it so people can make their own choices of font and size? Like Stephen... this website is now giving me a headache!!! thanks alot Goodreads!!!
I really like the new font, it's much more modern and it's not too small or too blurry on my computer. The white background could get annoying, though. My only complaint is the add author button is not working. It won't switch to the author side, just stays on the books side.
Emily wrote: "Nikki wrote: "Okay... so for me, the wonky missing-parts-of-letters issue is fixed, but now I'm seeing italics almost literally everywhere -- wherever there's a serif font that isn't a larger size ..."I just figured out -- it was actually an issue on my end. I had the Merriweather font installed, and deleting it fixed the site for some reason. I can live without it, so we're good! :)
Using Firefox and it still hurts my eyes and is giving me a headache to try and read anything on the site. Not that you really care.... obviously. I kind of feel like those of us letting you know that we don't like it because it's actually physically painful for us to try and read words on the site now are all just wasting our time giving you our feedback. You keep saying you've fixed the font rendering but it's making no difference. There was nothing wrong with the old font. Maybe it wasn't "pretty" or "modern" but pretty and modern don't make a damn bit of difference if I can't read the font because it hurts my eyes. At least I could read the old font without having to worry about being in pain. At this point, I feel like you're just giving a nice big middle finger to those of us who are having trouble reading the new font and are experiencing pain when trying to read the new font.
The more I browse through the more I hate it. Begging you here!
The fonts are to small & to light to read.
Headache & eye strain.
Please PLEASE fix this
I hate it. It is harder to read. I know I am not the only Goodreads member with "older" eyes. I would bet the decision to make these changes came from people under 40, who have no clue how much harder reading a screen gets as you get older.
Overall the new font is very nice, clean, and readable. However the default size is very very small. Resizing Chrome to show the site at 110-120% made it easier on my nearsighted self :-)
The new font actually does hurt my eyes. It looks like the whole screen is out of focus.
I don't even notice a difference. But I also don't pay attention to little details.
How sad is it that I didnt even notice? I'm not that observant
HATE IT. The new layout and font are hideous. It's harder to read and hurts my eyes. The site went from looking classy to trashy.
I do think that the font is pretty, but it is rather hard on my eyes--I do not have glasses or any vision impairments either, so this is coming from a healthy sight perspective. The font is somewhat hard for me to read due to it being so thin. A new font is a great idea, don't get me wrong! The only wrong thing in this situation is perhaps the font choice. ^^
You should have a "choose your background" like some email apps have.