It’s always a good idea to look over the shoulders of those organizations that you really trust and adore as it relates to their business and methodologies. MailChimp is one of those for me and they have recently shared some of the redesign thoughts via their blog which I think is a smashingly-good idea.
I also love how they admit some of their weaknesses with their design too:
The biggest challenge of designing for the old MailChimp site was the lack of an established direction. A designer tasked with creating a new page for a new feature, for instance, had no starting point. There wasn’t an existing grid, spacing, type style…nothing. Meta, Helvetica, Gotham, Lucida Grande, Georgia, and a handful of other typefaces were used freely everywhere. The site was a bit scatter brained and lacked a singular voice.
That’s being authentic and obviously transparent.
I have nothing but more love for them!
Gabe Taviano says
Good stuff. Started using their service two months back and have enjoyed it. Their new features page is pretty slick.
One thing I’m curious if they’ll ever offer is being able to add a new individual that you get an email from to your MailChimp list from within Gmail. I know being able to sync contact lists between Gmail and MailChimp might be too much, but adding one individual seems like it would make sense. Their bulk import from Gmail was a breeze.