A Fresh Look for Cup of Jo!

Hello!

Reader since 2010 here. I logged-on today for the first time since before your re-design, ready to open 10+ tabs to read everything I missed and boy was I surprised when I saw the new layout! My immediate first impression was that it felt impersonal and too commercial. It has none of the familiar brand coziness that I came to associate with Cup of Jo. Hope there is some room to combine what readers miss about the old site, and a fresh design.

I am sorry to say this, but the latest design is so not welcoming. I have been a reader since early days (I remember the 2010 design, and I have been okay with every single update since then) but this 2021 one is unappealing to say the least. It is confusing and hard to navigate and there is just so much. I have waited and waited to get used to it, but it is not happening. I had to find this post to share my two cents, please go back to the previous design. Nothing was wrong with it.

Longtime but sporadic reader here (I like to jump in every couple weeks/months and open 40 tabs with everything I missed and ready through it all in one sitting like a stack of favourite magazines). So maybe that’s why I don’t hate the magazine feel of the redesign. Still, I have to second the notion of so many of my fellow readers – I am missing a bit of Joanna in here. Your voice is still the USP of this blog and that’s somehow taken a back seat. Nothing wrong with the logo but it feels a it random whereas – in my opinion – it should feel like Joanna holding the door open to welcome the reader to her space, like the previous logos did. The impersonal logo paired with the removal of the introduction to Joanna that used to sit to the right is going too far, to my taste. I do love the fonts and the colours. xx

Dear Jo and team,
I waited to comment (as change is always hard) and i wanted to warm up to the redesign. I have loved your blog since the first iteration and will continue to love the voices of you and all your collaborators. But i am finding it really challenging to navigate your blog. I miss the old personal touches and on a computer it is really hard to read the new format. Lately i have basically just been coming back for the friday round ups because the layout of the more narrative posts is just hard to look at. Please do consider reverting, at a minimum improving the accessibility. Thank you so much for this lovely cozy space you’ve created. I do love this space and only offer this feedback as someone who wants to continue to be a loyal reader :).

Please take these comments as constructive criticism Jo and team. I have worked in marketing my whole life and helped many-a client with redesigns, and even run my own company and doing my own site was the worst! Anyway, I have been back to the blog a few times since the re-design and wasn’t sure whether to comment, but I never stay very long now. It just doesn’t feel inviting anymore. As others have said, the images were always a big pull, and now they just seem a bit odd. I’m looking on my phone so it may be different on a laptop, but the fact that some are landscape and some are portrait makes it seems disjointed, possibly added to the fact that they are now framed in a colour band, drawing attention to the fact. The spacing is also strange. There is equal space between the headline and the images on the post before and after, so at first glance it’s not obvious which headline goes with which picture (is it the one above, or the one below?!). It is possible to work it out, but the combination of these things make it hard work to get to the (always amazing!) content. I love this blog and have been following for about 8 years, and always look forward to coming back and reading the latest posts. I especially love it when I have missed a few days and cone back to a few new posts, but it’s just not that enjoyable anymore. My first reaction when I saw the site was either you’d been hacked or it just wasn’t loading properly on my phone. It looks to me like a CMS site – which echoes with what others have said about a magazine/corporate feel. I understand this may be to make it easier for the team to work on the site, but it just doesn’t feel the same. Sorry.

I haven’t been on the site for a few months (due to some changes in my life) and I was so looking forward to come to this corner of the internet where I have been feeling safe and familiar for the past 10 years. Unfortunately it seems that instead of reaching my friend’s house I somehow ended up by mistake on a stranger’s house… I didn’t really mind the design change so much but what it truly hurts is to see this space move from a personal blog type of internet corner to a magazine-like internet corner. We all know there is a team behind this and we do appreciate the team, but small things like having the photo of you and Anton on the right side made it feel like family. I’ve learned so much from this space and I consider it a friend’s house, please don’t turn it into a Zara store…

I’ve been a long time reader (since Toby was born) and I loved the last change of your site a couple of years ago but unfortunayely not this one :( I really don’t like the new font of your logo/header, it has no charme like it had before. I might say, it lost all his charme and I love your blog. I also miss your pictures which made your site so familiar and ‘human’ – contrary to all those other blogs around that look all so similar and commercial (big business blogs).. please don‘t go there. We all know that there is a team behind ‚A cup of Jo‘ but you‘re the soul of it which makes it so unique and special.
Ps. Also the ‘view older posts’ button doesn’t work on my ipad.. don’t know why

Okay crazy but I only saw it on mobile and really didn’t like it. I just logged in from desktop for the first time since the redesign and I actually like it a lot! Looks great on the computer. I still miss your last logo, which was warmer, more friendly, and a tad quirky. But otherwise I do think it looks great. Better than the last? I don’t know, it’s hard to remember now lol.

I’ve given it a little time, since change is hard, but unfortunately I find the new site much less pleasing to look at, as well has harder to find things. I don’t think I’ve clicked on an article since this was updated. I’ll still come here and maybe find things because I have always loved the content, it’s just… not as… usable.

Cup of Jo has been a daily constant on my very dwindling lists of blogs I find refuge in. There is a modern grace and this space is honestly one of my life pleasures. As a designer (who is a huge fan of RoAndCo), I try to keep an open mind to change. But as a loyal reader, the new layout is disjointed and not nearly as intuitive. Fingers crossed there is a further metamorphosis to bridge the old layouts UI with the new designs aesthetics. All the best!

I’m sorry but I don’t like the redesign. It’s hard to read. It doesn’t feel comfortable. It’s like a stiff shirt I’m trying hard to pull on. I didn’t visit for a week and today decided I had to. This isn’t fresh. It feels disjointed like you’ve cut and paste fonts. Sorry to be negative but it’s my first reaction!

I am so sad to post a negative comment, because I love COJ so much, but the site is very hard to read now. On my phone the fonts are so tiny that I feel my eyes straining to process the info efficiently. I have perfectly OK eyesight and I never had a problem reading your sight previously, or most other sites either, but now my eyes ache after reading COJ.

Also, the beautiful photos on the main page are no longer showcased well—they are so small compared to before with often there is a ton of white space around them which actually drains their color. The photos alone used to pull me into articles, but now they don’t grab me the way they used to—it’s so sad.

I actually like a lot about the new design, including the new colors, but the size of these element, especially the fonts, is making my eyes so tired I don’t think I’ll be able to read it as long or enjoy it as much. Please consider sizing up again! I want to keep reading COJ as much as I used to!

<3

Aesthetically, I love the new design!! And I love that you, as a team, are constantly reflecting and growing. But I’m here to second what many others are saying: it is very challenging to read through several days’ worth of posts at once. I loved being able to start with the most recent post and then move backwards and that is no longer a simple navigation. Can you please bring back the ability to move chronologically from one post to the next without moving back to the home page each time?? Please and thank you! :)

I like the new look! It looks like a lifestyle magazine. Beautiful!

Concur. It’s really difficult to catch up on more than a week’s worth of posts. For example, if I’m into week two reading a post, I have to toggle back to the main screen, where I dropped at the bottom of the page, then I have to press load more again, and then go to the next older post. I liked how before I would be on page 2 and could just toggle back and forth between post + page 2 without having to go all the way to the beginning. Basically, I’m complaining because I love the blog and want to read it faster :)

Please, please consider redoing the new layout. This design is so difficult to read and very unpleasant to look at/navigate. Everything about it puts me off, it reads as chaotic.

Longtime reader here: How can I find all of the posts from the past week? I went on vacation without my laptop and hoped to catch up today. I think your design is fine, but the navigation seems invisible. How about adding a list of your most recent posts along with your most popular ones? How about adding “Older Posts” somewhere at the bottom of the featured post? How about adding the date to each post so I don’t have to read the comments to see that I’m reading something from 2020? You have a big site, and it’s very confusing now! Thanks!

I can cope with layout changes.
But I can’t handle pop-up ads.

Please change the font of the Cup of Jo. My head hurts from that font :))
But that font really bothers my eyes.
You are still the best regardless of this “painful” font :))

Marija

I love the new redesign! It’s fresh, and the colors are bright and bold (like Ashley Ford’s new book cover, which is so eye-catching). I’m a creative at mid-size marketing agency and involved in the first stages of redesign for our clients. It can be difficult. You want to push creative boundaries while telling the brand’s story. But, sometimes there can be too many cooks in the kitchen, which can cause you to question every decision you’ve made during the process. Anyway, I for sure think the new site is a glow up! Good luck!

Just writing to say that reading through everyone’s critiques truly shows how much this site has meant to so many people, and that we’re all so invested. I’ve loved the thoughtful and kind responses from the COJ team <3 Always with such grace and humility and assuming everyone has good intentions sharing their opinions. I love y'all!

Nicely organized and good use of colour! I have to say I miss the old logo though, the font was elegant.

Grumpy about change here! The photos on the home tour and week of style are SO small – it does it a disservice. Those were my favourite posts and it’s just not the same with such tiny photos. Please make them bigger! These seem smaller than an Instagram pic. The articles now have so much white space on either side, I’m scrolling and scrolling through a long column read – not appealing. The font size for the main categories is so tiny and I don’t like the font for the comments – it seems outdated somehow – like a typewriter. The subtitles for each article are bigger than the entire category title – this all seems unbalanced. I probably won’t click on any of the comic posts just to see the full picture, where previously, I could enjoy it just by reading the main page. Wish it hadn’t changed at all!

The new design is GORGEOUS on my phone, but unreadable on my laptop. The pop-up ads and all their movement is distracting and the lay-out is wonky. I guess I will be checking in on my phone, which is perfectly fine. I still love the content!

Hello COJ team! As you make additional tweaks to the design, an option to move to the next or previous post when you are within a post, would be great. I often need to catch up with a few day’s posts and in the new design I had to go back to the main menu to find the next post and then click it, rather than just continuing on to the next one. I think the old site had this function, like an arrow, to proceed to the next/previous post. Thanks so much!