The Financial Times is about to re-launch FT.com with a new look and feel, as the screenshot above indicates.

My instinctive reaction to the new look:

1. A much more attractive layout, making good use of white (er, pink) space
2. I’d lose the pink background, though, a bit nauseous on the eye.

I understand the reasoning why a pink background is important to the FT, as the popup explanation indicates when you hover over the ‘2’ on the sample new page.

Yet, if I were the FT, I’d not do that as I find it simply a distracting element on my screen. There surely must be other design aspects the FT can employ that would keep that visual connection with the print newspaper, much as they already do on the current site, eg, the masthead pink with the page background white.

If you have a view, you can tell the FT’s project team what you think. I did, adding this:

The pink background is visually distracting. I understand why you want to have it (visual connection with the print FT), yet please reconsider: it does little for the reader.

As I’m a subscriber to FT.com, I received a “Dear FT.com reader” email this morning from Lionel Barber, the FT’s editor, about the re-launch:

[…] This is the first step in a series of design changes and functional improvements that will be rolled out across the rest of the site as they become available. These include:

• expanded coverage of important subjects such as macroeconomics, energy and technology
• better integration between market data and news, to give context to market movements
• more opportunities for users to become part of the Financial Times community by contributing to our discussion forums and blogs

Looking forward to seeing how the FT achieves its online goals.

Related posts:

• Making FT.com compelling
• Insights and sharing at the FT
• Social networks from the Financial Times