Housekeeping: TTAC Gets Game-Changing Design Language

When you log in to this grand old site next week, it will look different. For the first time in … well, a long time.

I know, you’ve heard talk of a redesign before. I’ve even seen mockups! But for a variety of reasons, things never moved past the planning stage.

Now, however, our corporate parents are leveraging a partnership and TTAC will be getting fresh new duds.

You probably have questions.

Here’s what I know:

• You’ll need to reset your password after the update in order to continue commenting.
• Old comments WILL migrate over.
• The site will remain operational during the migration.
• I will be monitoring my inbox and the tips inbox for specific questions from you all.
• The migration should be complete early next week. I’m being intentionally vague on timing because unplanned things happen, but I’d expect that even if we run into problems, the migration will be complete by mid-week at the latest.
• Old articles will migrate over.
• Some things will change, but the basic user experience shouldn’t change too much. Comments, tags, categories — all the little things you see should remain, in one form or another. Fast facts will remain part of car reviews, for example. The site will LOOK different, but by and large, it will navigate mostly the same.

Change can be both welcome and difficult at the same time. Putting aside the business concerns and opportunities that a redesign brings, I’ve been of two minds on this. Part of me thinks it’s far past time, just from an aesthetics standpoint, for TTAC to update. While the site has changed over time — some Wayback Machine sleuthing from before the time I was a semi-regular reader shows that the site has looked different in the past, but not all that dissimilar to its current form — it hasn’t truly had a radical change, to my knowledge.

On the other hand, the current site’s familiarity sometimes seems nice and comfortable.

That said, I’ve seen how the new site will look, and the design is cleaner and less cluttered. And more modern.

I’m struggling to find a good automotive comp. I think the change is more like the C8 Corvette than say, the retro-themed Mustang redesign from all those years ago. The shape is familiar, and the mission is the same, but the engine has moved in such a way that makes the car so much better.

It takes some getting used to, though. A mid-engined Corvette? No manual?! Yet the car is better than before. Albeit a lot different than the previous gen. Or all the previous gens that came before.

I hope that’s how you’ll think of TTAC the same way — with fond memories of the past, but understanding that the new vehicle is so much better.

Feel free to reach out to me with any questions.

[Image: TTAC/VerticalScope]