Photo: El Bibliomata/Flickr

Almost from the first days of Berkeleyside, we’ve been a bit restless about our design. It was something we threw up when we created the site, but we knew we wanted to change it when we grew up. It needed honing, and we needed to make room for a host of new ideas for Berkeleyside.

In September we tweeted that we were looking for a designer, and we had the great fortune to find a Berkeleysider who was also a hugely talented web designer. Berkeley-based Doug Ng took our enthusiasm and our unformed ideas about what the site should look like and imposed a careful, steady process that has resulted in the site you see today.

From past experience with redesigns, I’m pretty sure there will be Berkeleysiders who cry, “Please go back to the old design!” I’m confident time will heal these wounds and that for the vast majority of readers, the redesign will be seen as an immediate improvement. You’ll find that the new design provides far better navigation, makes it easier for us to show the range of material on the site, gives our advertisers more breathing room, and gives us greater ability to add new, valuable elements to the site in future.

As always, we’re happy to hear what you think.

Lance Knobel (Berkeleyside co-founder) has been a journalist for nearly 40 years. Much of his career was in business journalism. He was editor-in-chief of both Management Today, the leading business magazine...