Ouch, my eyes hurt :-(

Thanks! We've deliberately tried to break from the norm with the design - which has raised a few eyebrows. We're still in the experimental phase - so all comments, good and bad are welcome - and indeed integral to our development strategy.

Your answer made me risk a second look. I think what really hurt my eyes was the "contents" page - the combination of unreadability and not knowing what it is all about made my eyes hurt. I clicked "contents" first because I hoped it would let me figure out what your page is all about (english not being my first language, I didn't realise that Queensspech would be a journal about/for homosexuals).

I clicked on article links now, and I think they are acceptable (some finetuning of the colors wouldn't hurt, though). The layout reminds me of the time when I still read Wired (but I hated their layout), but more happily, of the 80ies, when school magazines would still be created with scissors and glue.

I am still not sure what the "contents" page is about...

The 80's / ZX Spectrum / 'Scissors and glue' look was intentional, but we take on board your comments about the 'contents' page. I think we need to work on this page a lot more to make it more usable, and of course understandable, but hopefully still retaining its 'edgy' visual appearance.

The contents page is meant the be hub of 'what is exciting and new' within QueensSpeech (like a magazine contents page) - only the highest rated and most read articles by our community appear on the contents page.

We also have an RSS feed available which lists all new content submitted ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/queensspeech ).

I'm really happy that you spent time going through the site again, and hopefully next time you visit you will be able to experience some of the improvements we have planned!

My suggestion would be not to get so experimental that I can't figure out what you're about and decide to leave the site altogether.

If that is what you did, from your short experience on the site, did you take anything positive or informative from it?

Well, a "social publishing network" is intriguing, but only on the second visit did I confirm that it had a gay theme. With your name and the layout I was suspicious, but I wasn't sure. This time I read the title at the top of my browser window.

I'm not in the target demographic, but here are my first thoughts:

- I think the idea will work and sells itself. - I'm a little confused mystified by the navigation: are these feature stories? Columns? Other blogs? Is this an "issue style" publication or is it constantly published?

I won't comment on the content (I browsed an article) because I'm not the intended audience, and wouldn't want to add worthless information.

Good luck to you, you may have a bit of a winner.

Regarding the top navigation bar, we've already started work on a new nav bar that will give greater clarity and be easier to use, and will be topic based...

I will will post an update when the new nav is online.

Thanks for your comments so far!