Today it was announced that once a dying a website has re launched with a new set of offerings. Excited at first i rushed to see the new site. As soon as the page loaded i told my self, is this for 6 year kids? such ugly colors, it hurts my eyes, i can't focus on any part of the page. I was about to close the site forever that an idea crossed my thought: so many other sites are making the mistakes of this site, it's my duty to inform them!

The site is ReadBurner, about a month or so ago a few blogs wrote that the site was closing and handing the torch to RSSMEME. The idea is nothing new, nor is it interesting to people like me but none the less it's an upcoming trend and something that it will probably last for another year, lets hope so.

The current look is childish to put it nicely, the primary colors are orange and blue which should remind a lot of people the kids TV channel Nickelodeon. apparently the designer is PixelTalent, to be honest he is anything but a talent, i recommend him to go to school since he has potential! anyways back to RB, the logo is ugliest thing ever, it was ugly when 3-4 years most websites were using the style and it is ugly still. The logo needs to be changed ASAP, but it's not the topic of this discussion.

The colors Blue and Orange, though complimentary colors do work together very well on this site. The rule thumb is, for a simple site 3 colors which are made up of 2 muted soft tones + 1 high tone color (for example, grey + light muted green + RED) however, ReadBurner is using high-tone blue + hight-tone orange + grey, the sharpness of the colors put side by side compete for attention, your eyes can't figure out where to look.

so enough bashing! the site has a lot of good things going for it as well. The typography is nice and clean, no supersized fonts, clear distinction between headers, links and content. the spacing between articles is wide enough which allows for better readability. However, the count box on the right side of article is distracting with the fade effect. The fade is downwards which encourages the reader to look upwards (opposite effect). The color of the fade blends right into the background blue, it needs to stand out a bit without overtaking the hierarchy.

so i decided to change the design, since all my issues were about the color choices, the change was rather simple, i downloaded the main and changed the CSS to address some of the issues i had with colors. As you can see below by changing a few colors around the site looks more elegant, easier to read and navigate through.

Next time you design a site and you want to make it as colorful as possible please think about the eyes of us, readers, harsh colors do hurt our eyes and make us leave the site much sooner than you'd like!