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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 2,401-2,450 of 3,113 (3113 new)
message 2401:
by
Lisa
(new)
Dec 18, 2015 02:30AM
All the letters seem to have a faint fuzziness around them.
flag
In general, the characters are too small!!!
Dislike the new font. It's difficult to read--some letters blotchy.
After the update, things got sooo much better. It's great! Keep up the good work!
The more I look at it, the more I hate the new teal color. It feels like Facebook--and I ran away from that abomination. :(Can we have a choice of color palettes in our profile preferences? Shouldn't be hard to program.
LOVING the new update; so much sleeker and neater!
Dislike it. The letters are still not clear. Horrible on iPad and not much better on computer. Feel like I need to wear glasses. The font is not sharp enough. Not to mention too small in comment box. Size of letters in comment box is half the size of that outside. I'm happy to send screenshot to show you if you have an email address to send it
MrsJoseph wrote: "HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE"Blimey.
I really like it. It's new and different and refreshing. I also really loved my Year in Books. It brought it all back;)
Not liking the font. It's harder on the eyes. Can there be an option to change the font?
Can you please wake up to proper web design practices and fix the part where I can arrange and rearrange my books?Overall the site experience sucks! Especially when it comes to my books!
Fixing UI won't help
It is not toooooo good but kind of an okay change.
I prefer the way it was before, the changes 'cheapens' the look of Goodreads - it looked more professional before the change; and I'm mostly referring to the new 'square-looking' font, it looks dated...
Honestly, I liked it better before the changes.
Please, please Goodreads. Bring back the borders in our review page so our reviews won't look like it's floating on air. It's hideous to look at. Please bring those borders back!
I actually have to squint to read it...... it look okay if you zoom out.
The regular font is still hard to read, but I especially dislike the 'currently reading' part, it's almost like parts of the letters are missing :-/
My biggest complaint is with the "Merriweather" serif font.I usually like serif fonts, but this is hard on the eyes. Look at the "f" and the "t", the top of the staff all but vanishes. The hook on the "i" does something similar. Compare those to the sharp lines of the "l".
The changes in line thickness don't display properly, causing a 'faded typewriter' appearance. It's even worse when italicized. You can see this in some of the numbers, too. ( "5", "6", vs. "7").
This might be what's giving people so many headaches, especially in contrast to the even weight of the "Lato" font.
Nice font changes. I like both, especially the serif font, which I find sleek and modern.
The new layout design is nice. However, the fonts are difficult to read.
I HATE THIS FONT AND ALSO THE COLOR!
Samantha wrote: "My biggest complaint is with the "Merriweather" serif font.I usually like serif fonts, but this is hard on the eyes. Look at the "f" and the "t", the top of the staff all but vanishes. The hook o..."
Exactly this. Thank you for describing what is wrong.
I cannot look at this website for more than 5 minutes without getting nauseous. I have a depth deficiency in my eyesight and that merriweather font (which I still see with a blur) is not friendly at all. I have to focus three times before I can actually decipher the separate letters. The lato font does work but please change this as I will not be able to visit the site with this lay out.
Font is too fuzzy looking, making it hard on the eyes. Considering this is a text heavy site, can you have different font options?
HATE IT! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE CHANGE IT BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I can't see any of the links anymore. They all look the same color!
I have my browser set at 125% zoom by default, and the sans serif font is still microscopic.If I bump up to 150%, the sans serif is readable, but all other text and images on the page become blurry.
Inconvenience, eye strain, and headaches are not good aesthetic choices.
I like the look of the font but it has Problems with CZech diacritics, so it looks really weird to us, especially the titles of the book on the front page, there is no font letter for the czech ě for example, it works on the comments but not on the titles of the books :(edit: hmm now I see it doesn´t even work here on the comment :(
Dear Goodreads,By now it should be fairly obvious that the majority of users on this site STRONGLY DISLIKE the new layout. Please revert it to the old one, or at least make it an option that can be changed back as desired.
Sincerely,
--EVERYBODY
Oh i want to say that i hate the fonts and the colour cause i'm use to the older version. But ...i still hate it. No offence.
Didn't notice the change! I use the goodreads site on my smartphone and have no problem reading it either before or after the changes.
I liked that you were having changes, but the letters are too small... I don't have problems with my eyesight, but i can't see!!! :D
My initial reaction was, "What the heck? They changed the fonts!" I don't immediately like it, but it takes me a while to adjust to changes, so I'll reserve judgement for now. It does seem to be more difficult for me to read than the old look, but I zoomed the text, and that helped a lot.
I love the Lato font, but the Merriweather font is so blurry, even with my glasses on!
I don't care who designed it or what it means, it's freaking awful. Take it from someone older and not with the best eyes to begin with. Now I have blurred vision after looking at something I can't make out with ease. Yuk!
The new layout is terrible. PLEASE change it back to the previous one or at least give us the opportunity to chose between the "old" and the "new" layout!
As I realize that not everyone has the same eye strain problem as I have I found an example on an image how the site now looks for me 
With some squinting I can obviously read what it says but it is not situation I want to walk into on my favorite site. I understand it is my eye problem causing this but it might clear up a bit why a lot of people are having this problem. And yes I am already wearing glasses with correction for this problem but my brain and eyes will still not compute everything ;)
Quotation marks and apostrophes are hideous. Need to be curly again.
I find this font a lot harder on my eyes, not that it is harder to read but I find that it is putting a strain on my eyes that was not there before. I noticed the change immediately and am not thrilled. The color scheme change is fine, but I would appreciate a change back in font or the option to change the font back
I don't like the font changes. I'd rather prefer the old one: much more readable, and soooo better because I was used to it since a long time.Since I use Firefox, now I'm trying to use the Firebug plugin that allows me not to apply the google fonts css (so I can have the "old" fonts)
While I understand the need for change, and I'm quite fond of the new fonts, there is still space for improvement. The colour picks are fine, the loss of gradients is cool, but my issue is with the fonts. While they looks very good with basic English, once I switched to using various not-so-common letters English doesn't use (eg: ř,š,č,ě,ú,ů) it got messy. So, either update the fonts with these less common letters found in non-english alphabets (sadly, not everyone is satisfied with 26 letters)... or keep it messy? But the latter is not pretty.
I didn't pay much attention to the old font. It was unobtrusive and readable. However the new font i did notice, not because of the change, but because it messed with my eyes and made reading text frustrating. I'm for the old adage 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it!' Why do sites think they have to continually update?
The font size in the home page somehow seems smaller and harder to read than the font size here in the comments. And, in the case of the text in bold, the font tends to blur. Awful change. I love this page, but I've got to be honest.
The new fonts and format bothers my eyes, which leads to headaches within a few minutes of being on the site. As someone who is chronic migraine sufferer, this is not good. Please, please, please either change it back or allow each person to decide which format they want. And don't give us "it's not possible" because many websites offer it.
