A lot of the feedback so far has been about the purple - too much, too bright etc. For what it's worth, I don't personally hate the new branding and theme, but I don't love it either. I've lived with the new theme since launch and have been trying to just let it all sink in and reserve judgement until I'd had some time to "acclimate". But
something has been bugging me and I've struggled to put my finger on it... until now. This is clearly a subjective opinion, but here goes...
I think the problem is that the overt use of vivid purple in the site theme doesn't gel with the new logo. Let's consider the old theme and logo for a moment -:
View attachment 462814
As highlighted above, the (let's just call it) "AFF blue" in the logo is carried into the text component of the logo, and is also carried over to the menu bar. Whilst not always the same shade, blue is carried over as a consistent theme for the rest of the forum page, creating a consistent theme that's tied in with the AFF logo -:
View attachment 462815
When we look at the new logo, the purple
is there, but it is a significantly less prominent colour in the overall logo design -:
View attachment 462817
As highlighted above, it's basically just the bottom-left corner of the logo. Sure, the colour has been carried into the menu bar, but as that purple forms such an inconspicuous part of the overall logo design, its subsequent prominent use throughout the rest of the forum theme seems incongruous and inconsistent with the updated logo/brand -:
View attachment 462819
Now in saying all of that, I recognise that this vivid purple has been made a core colour of the refreshed AFF brand identity and you can't just ignore it with the new forum theme. This leads me to a second observation that you might consider as more of a "suggestion" to balance the new branding whilst appeasing those who find the overt use of purple in the new forum theme a little too much for their taste....
Looking at the "Classic" AFF theme, there is consistent use of the linear gradient blue/white in the header blocks for each forum section -:
View attachment 462820
This same colouring flows through to the various sub-sections -:
View attachment 462821
By contrast, the "New" AFF theme uses vivid purple for the header blocks of each forum section -:
View attachment 462822
However this seems to transition into a linear gradient styling for the various sub-sections (which is much easier on the eye) -:
View attachment 462823
Now, if we were to apply the same sort of consistent colour styling to the main forum page, we'd get something like this -:
View attachment 462824
I suspect something like the above example might offer a way to still incorporate/hero the vivid purple from the updated branding, whilst being more consistent in terms of the theme colouring - especially when compared to the "Classic" theme - and also dialing back the excessive use of vivid purple that other members have found to be overly jarring.
Just my 2c worth, but hope it's helpful
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