New Coat of Paint...

You may have noticed something different on our blog today. A different look-and-feel.

Welcome to the LinkedIn blog's first significant redesign since our launch. Yes, we figured it was about time, but we wanted to do it for the right reasons. In addition to behind-the-scenes improvements to our content management system, speeding up page load times and building a foundation for language improvements down the road, here are changes you'll see today:

Our primary goal with the redesign was to shine the spotlight on the content, minus all the clutter. We removed a few widgets and just kept the three that's tied to the content - Status Updates, Photos and Videos. And, we also wanted to feature posts through a more visually appealing feature section.

I think Dan Frommer said it best:

Don't make your site more complicated than it needs to be. Like editing text, you can often improve design by deleting.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't have photos and illustrations, just make sure they're adding to the experience.

Try to keep load times as short as possible, and note that many readers may be using mobile devices (and slow connections) to access your site. Make the right tradeoffs between revenue, flashiness, and clutter.

In addition, we wanted to make all the content, including the archives easily accessible to all readers. So we've surfaced topics to the main flow of the design that lets you stumble upon different categories of content. Plus, there are a ton of nuanced design changes that are to be experienced as you check out various posts.

So, who are the folks behind these changes?

Prajakta Godbole and Stephanie Trimble who put the blog's new design and development through its paces.

Steve Pecko for saying "No" when we broke brand guidelines. A hat tip to Amanda Poray for the original design, David Kleiner for help migrating the blog to its new home and Florina Xhabija who was instrumental in keeping our blog up and running through the years. Thanks, guys!

We'd love to hear from you on the redesign. Just leave a comment or say "Hi" on Twitter @linkedin.