There seem to be three opinions to have on the Globe and Mail redesign: 1) love, 2) hatred and 3) indifference.
Personally, I think their use of colour is awesome, as is the new multimedia integration that’s all over the place. After all, as Greenspan says in that video that you can now access from the top of the page (a feature that I hope will last after the self-promotion is over), they’re not really running a newspaper that happens to also have a website anymore. They’re selling something that revolves completely (increasingly completely — check out those half-hidden falling charts in some of the print circulation shots) around their website. Having those other multimedia features there (even if I’ll probably never watch them, I have no doubt that many people will) gives them more to offer. And having all those separate page layouts, instead of the one that was only occasionally changed for extensive features, also translates the idea of print better online than just posting the nicely laid-out text ever could.
Plus, it’s prettier. I’m just saying.
The thing that bugs me most is the way content lower on the page is displayed — the lines make the content heavier and seem a bit too dark, and subcategories are a bit less noticeable. However, it wasn’t all that great before, and switching from one evil to another slightly different one doesn’t make too much of a difference.
Right now in their feedback poll, the love is at 36% and the hate is at 37% (27% are indifferent, and presumably many people who are indifferent also haven’t bothered to vote). But I’m guessing they’ll get more viewers from having a nicer site than they’ll loose.