As promised by Skout Founder, Christian Wiklund - the homepage of Skout.com has been redesigned.  I feel that some great improvements were made, and at the same time some elements took a turn for the worst.

Here are some notes on the design.  I'll just break it down quickly from top down.

1.  The heart + the target icon.  Completely out of place and doesn't match the forward thinking idea of the site.  The illustration is more of hand done classic look.  It's also a bit misplaced, throwing of the balance of the homepage.  It also pushes the logo to the right quite a bit, creating another distraction and imbalance. 

2.  The text menu isn't aligned with anything, so it's a bit float and out of place.  

3.  The Login, Signup and Search buttons are overpowering in essence and underwhelming in execution.  

4.  I like the use of the slide show to point out what the site does.  It's a great add.

5.  The buttons are so big and bright, the search section of the site underneath sign up looks like an after thought.

6.  A little more work on the boxes that carry the phones and member could go a long way.  

7.  Use of a more updated phone would freshen' things up a bit.

8.  I would love a shot at this home page!! 

With these points said, I really appreciate the fact that they are trying to move forward and it seems like great design matters to Chris and his wonderful team.  

I just checked out Techcrunch.com today for the first time in a few days and I was surprised again with a new design.  It seems like the Techcrunch folks can't make up their minds about what the site should look like.  A week ago I had noticed another version of the site that was hyper-crowded, boxy and full of unsightly elements (mostly ads.)  The content had been squeezed to the point that you weren't sure if this was still the greatest Techblog on the web.

Today, It's a bit cleaner.  I see that they are still utilizing their newly implemented tab design that links you to the other Crunch blogs and sites.  They are still using the big feature boxes on below the navigation.  I really dislike these, they are so large and the imagery that they use isn't exciting or compelling.  The blue around the boxes is also a bit distracting.  I come to Techcrunch to see what's new on TC, not to be hindered with what the editors think I should look at.  The huge banner ad on top is just a bit too much also, but I can see how Michael Arrington and crew wouldn't toss the extra income.  

The lack of a solid, compelling Identity is still on the top of my list when it comes to TC.  Whether or not they feel like they need a great logo is another story.

For now I'll just keep watching out to see if they make anymore edits to this shapeshifting site.  Let me know how you feel about the new design.