What should the site look like, i.e. Site Design?

Question

As scientists, we are often accused of being oblivious to aesthetics, yet the aesthetics of a website plays an important role in its draw to the community at large and its usability, as the other physics.se site found. There is a case for austerity in our design, both math.se and mathoverflow have very spare designs. I find them slightly painful to look at for long periods, but they work quite well with the subject matter. I think there are better examples with tex.se and stats.se, and still feature the spare, yet functional aesthetic. Regardless of what we decide, I do not want to end up retaining the beta site look.

Thoughts?

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Comments

Are you abolutely sure that this is the very first question to ask here?

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I think it's fine to get the design discussion started early. I'd like to see more suggestions from the users of this community. Visually, what do you think separates this site from physics.se?

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@Dori, good point, I was using what was used on physics.se.

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Answer 1

The 5th question in The 7 Essential Meta Questions of Every Beta is to talk about the design of the site. However, this is much too early to talk about the site design.

A site receives a site design once it graduates from beta status. Our beta sites share the "sketchy" theme to indicate the beta feeling.

Focus on building your site first. There isn't even a single question on the main site! Your efforts should be focused there. You need a site with content in order to have a site to design!

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Comments

My intent was to get started on those questions. Question number one, requires questions first. Q2 required more time than I had. Q3 is multi-faceted, and I have at least one concern I was planning on bringing up when I had the time. Q4, I didn't know where to start. Q5: I had a definite opinion on. You're right that content should be the primary focus, but this was easy to get out of the way.

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