why are the article's titles set after the pictures, it looks very unprofessional and confusing. Like im used to reading a title then seeing a picture, not the other way around. What other news sites have this stupid look ?! I know its been a long time, and i thought id get used to it but it still makes me nauseous/confused.
This was raised when the TA re-design was first released. I wouldn't say "the front page looks really bad"; more like a minor impairment. My suggestion was - if they want the pictures before the headings - then include a more obvious divider line, so it's clear where each topic starts / ends. Another issue: In the 'Hot Games' list the screenshots are often cropped weirdly, so only part of the picture is visible.
The weird cropping issues are because it's really difficult to deal with portrait mode screenshots in any kind of reasonable way to do what we wanted to do- Particularly with the new aspect ratio of the iPhone 5/5s. There's not a great solution for that we can do automatically. The hot games list is dynamic, and it isn't really feasible for us to go through and optimize the crop of every portrait screenshot to look more relevant. This is something we spent a lot of time on when we switched over, and while not ideal, it seems to be the best solution.
Content is most important but I agree the front page could use some tweaking. The inconsistent picture headers (sometimes present, other times not) are confusing especially with mid-page advertisements (which often mirror picture headings, especially if the following article has none). Maybe adding a organe yellowish border around title/header pictures could help better identify them and brand the page with a unique Touch Arcade style.