LinkedNN
While I am a fan in spirit of the new LinkedIn redesign, I have to give it a thumbs down overall. It doesn’t come off as a wholehearted attempt at a complete rethink, but rather as top-down reshuffle. A major stumbling block that keeps me from giving it more support is the fact that it mirrors the CNN design too closely and fails to follow the golden rule of design, which is “steal, but make it your own.” This axiom wasn’t followed when a certain key executive at my last gig was caught red-handed doing some major portal pilfering. Furthermore, on many pages, it appears as though they grafted on old pages onto the new grid, something that is inevitable with many redesigns but is usually unsightly and looks unpolished.
There are some nice layout customization features and a few AJAX-y treats, but otherwise it doesn’t stand on it’s own, nor does it do anything to push the medium further.
Here’s a video outlining some of the new features.
