Salon released their beta web design a few weeks back:

This morning CNN released their new look:

The similarities are quite interesting. Check out that red up in the top banner, and the new column format. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but red? Is blue just played out? Sure both logos have always had some red but this is quite a shift from the recent past. Is this a political "align with the left" sort of thing? Even that'd be weird since red states in the media in the recent past have meant aligning with the political right in this country.

My posts today are being dominated by exceedingly interesting items coming across the design email list at work here. Nine days out of ten nothing happens on these lists worth noting but today has been quite interesting.

I like how the info is presented here with the fonts colored to indicate which is which, the dashed lines to call out the differences, the superimposition of both in the middle. Would be neat to see this with 3D glasses.

I've a fantasy that the makers of Helvetica and Arial despise each other, snipe at each other in the press and rumble at the bike racks and in alleys behind bars. Yes I know this is impossible but if fucking font/design dorks wrote for Saturday Fucking Night Live maybe we'd see something like this happen, and it'd be fucking funny.