Observations On The MAC-Sports.com Redesign

Website design has always been one of my hobbies. I'm not terribly great at it, why I only consider myself a connoisseur rather than an expert at it. But I knows what I likes. And the old MAC-Sports website was tantamount to a big rig. Got the job done, looks be damned.

The new one, which went live today, is pretty sleek. It looks like they just overhauled the entire layout and added "school pages" for news and notes about specific institutions.

A few quick observations:

• There's a little bit of crowding on some of the pages; for example, in the midsection of school pages. When there's not much space, itcansometimesbedifficulttoread.

• A lot of animation is happening in the menu bar. I'll get over it, but he way it "wipes" to the new submenu just kind of takes me by surprise every time.

• This "Fan Zone" has potential. Right now it looks like a Facebook posting dump for whatever question they have for us. Great to see they have an interactive portion, and hopefully they can expand on that.

• It still remains to be seen what they'll do with live streaming games, and if that video player will be improved. I'm most interested about this, and I'm sure most of you are as well. It's not easy to watch non-televised games.

• Aw, they got rid of all the season statistics prior to 2010. Well, that's what Sports-Reference and Statsheet are for, I suppose.

• Probably one of those perfect design nuances that only design-y people will appreciate, but notice how each of the school's icons is the same size EXCEPT for Akron's, which is at the beginning. The "A" just lines up right against the MAC shield. Pretty slick. Not sure if that was intentional or an accidental discovery.

So I'm sure they're going to be tweaking and adding new gadgets in the future (websites always do), but for now they finally put that old site out of its misery.