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So many of us agree that the new not-black topbar looks awful on Physics.SE. One solution to this would be to change the top-bar to reduce the discord, as has been done on scifi.SE and askubuntu.com (and possibly other sites).

However, another possibility would be to rethink the design of Physics.SE itself. Personally, I find the current design a little uninspiring anyway, and since many of the other Stack Exchange sites have really excellent designs I was wondering if it might be time to give ours another look.

I'm not a design expert, but I've never been a fan of the colour scheme, which somehow seems to say "company that makes elastic bands or something" rather than "community of academic experts and enthusiasts". Since one of the main problems with the top bar is the clash between the Stack Exchange logo and the main colours of our site, perhaps this would be a good time to think about changing our colour scheme. If we could also have a more modern-looking design with some (off-)black elements rather than just light blues and greens then the top bar might not look out of place at all.

I have no idea how likely this is to happen, but I thought it might be worth putting the idea out there to see if it gets any reaction from Stack Exchange and/or the community.

It really wouldn't require a big change. The following is not a serious suggestion (as I said I'm no designer) but here is the result of spending a couple of minutes applying colour curves in GIMP, to reduce the amount of green and red in the colour scheme, while leaving the top bar untouched:

modified screenshot

As you can see the colour clash against the Stack Exchange logo is greatly reduced, and the overall darker colour scheme lessens the impact of the bar itself. A proper designer could do a much better job, but the point is that a few gentle tweaks could make it look a lot less bad.

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    $\begingroup$ Did they change it on SciFi? It looks the same to me... anyway, you remember the design we had before this one, right? Given that we're already the only SE site to reject a design, as far as I know, I highly doubt the team would take it well if we ask for yet another redesign. $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Jan 3, 2014 at 2:55
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    $\begingroup$ I have no particular positive or negative feelings about our current design. It's functional. I'd worry that a redesign could take us backwards rather than forwards and I just don't think we should fix something unless it's clearly broken. $\endgroup$ Jan 3, 2014 at 3:01
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    $\begingroup$ @DavidZ that must be before my time - the current design has been in use for as long as I've been a member. The scifi site's topbar is slightly translucent. $\endgroup$
    – N. Virgo
    Jan 3, 2014 at 4:28
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    $\begingroup$ See this and the links within for some history on our original design. $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Jan 3, 2014 at 4:51
  • $\begingroup$ I liked the inverted color design (black on white) but I think the question titles shouldn't have been in chalk because it hurts readability. $\endgroup$ Jan 3, 2014 at 7:28
  • $\begingroup$ 15 users out of 4900 is "many of us"? Really? $\endgroup$
    – 410 gone
    Jan 3, 2014 at 12:42
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    $\begingroup$ @EnergyNumbers most of those 4900 don't vote on meta. +15-4 is a good score. $\endgroup$
    – N. Virgo
    Jan 4, 2014 at 2:31
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    $\begingroup$ @EnergyNumbers: In addition to what Natheniel said, I agree with this post that the site should be redesigned now, but disagreed with the previous one, since I think that either the site should be redesigned, or the bar should be reverted to it' is original. $\endgroup$ Jan 4, 2014 at 4:28
  • $\begingroup$ @Nathaniel there have been heated discussions about the design in the early days, I can not link to them from my smart phone, but SE did not take it well indeed and people got upset a bit $\endgroup$
    – Dilaton
    Jan 7, 2014 at 8:36
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    $\begingroup$ I dig the darker blue in favor of the green. Definitely works better with the black bar on top. $\endgroup$
    – Kyle Kanos
    Jan 11, 2014 at 4:09
  • $\begingroup$ Really? Don't you have something better to do than to worry about what colors the top bar and the site banner have? $\endgroup$ Jan 22, 2014 at 15:17
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    $\begingroup$ @OlinLatgrop what I do in my spare time is my own business. I use this site every day, so yes, I do care whether its design is pleasing. $\endgroup$
    – N. Virgo
    Jan 23, 2014 at 0:30
  • $\begingroup$ @OlinLathrop very sorry for mis-typing your name above. $\endgroup$
    – N. Virgo
    Jan 23, 2014 at 3:07

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Please can we not change it. It works perfectly fine and looks nice to me. That's my vote. Cheers.

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