from Gawker.com
After this weekend's roiling changes at Gawker Media (or, as David Carr might say, Nick Denton deciding in his wisdom to make a few changes that we'll have to take his word on), Gawker and Gizmodo have both unveiled a new look: "Gawker Widescreen." Managing editor Lockhart Steele cites the "key advantage" of being able to "run very large photos" (like those of giant hot dogs), which will adjust automatically to browser window size. Steele says the new format has already rolled out on other sites, citing Defamer, Kotaku, Fleshbot, and Lifehacker.
As shown, the new Gawker masthead is at the side rather than the top, with more whitespace devoted to the banner ad. Does that make the masthead less prominent? Says Steele: "Not sure I'd agree. Another key goal of this design is to strip away all but the essentials, which gives everything that remains greater prominence. You'll notice that the third column of the old Gawker, which held a bunch of random internal links that just made the page feel more crowded, is almost totally subsumed here."
Gizmodo's new look includes an animated logo, previously only available in video format (Gizmodo statement here, as well as a snapshot of the old site). Steele says a Gawker statement on the redesign is forthcoming. UPDATE: Here is the Gawker statement, forthcame.
