Rethinking Gmail
Not your typical realignment
I use Gmail daily. It’s definitely the best email platform, and more and more I find myself using it in the browser. Sparrow was cool but no longer in development. Mail for Mac is not the greatest; Yosemite doesn’t help it much. As someone who likes to keep their inbox at zero, I found that the Gmail interface was far too busy and has too many unecessary elements that distract from the content that actually matters.
While I have seen several Gmail redesigns on sites like Dribbble, they are typically colour scheme changes with new icons and not much of a deep dive into a new layout or structure. So, instead of complaining, I decided to flex my UI muscles and give it a shot.
My goal was to make the email’s content the hero and focus by letting great typography take the lead. So, here it is with Inbox, Email, and Compose views listed:
Inbox
Compose
Inbox Messages
The first thing that I did was center the content to give the page structure. I removed uncessary layers of menus such as promotions, updates, etc. Then, I let great typography give the page balance for each email. I pushed the sender details and date to left so that it would get out of the way.
Notifications
I must say, I do like the notifications and different inboxes for things like promotions, but I don’t like the extra heavy menus at the top of the page. For that reason, I thought it would be great to put them as a panel on the right, so I can take action on any item no matter where I am. Plus, I thought it would be great to show a snapshot of the promotion so that they are not immediately deleted.
The sidebar can highlight things like Calendar meetings and, most importantly, it houses your Google Hangout chats/Gchat.
Reading Emails
I wanted to build on the inbox’s clean, strong type while still providing all the actions available now on Gmail.
Replying
This is pretty straightforward, but I wanted to maintain all of the powerful features while keeping true to the clean design.
Navigation
This is where I think one of the biggest improvements can be made to clean up the overall look. The Google search is still available along with all of the other navigation items.
In Conclusion
Gmail is a very difficult product to design and develop. Even the idea of starting this small redesign project was quite intimidating, but I believe my concepts help solve some design issues in a clean and simple way. Thanks for checking out my attempt at a Gmail redesign — I would love your feedback. Email me at: levin@fourandthree.com or start a conversation here.
Levin
@fourandthree
Copy editing by my lovely wife Suzannah @sevinmejia.
Sending love to the Gmail and OSX Mail team; our jobs as Designers/Developers are not easy ones- much respect.
All logos and trademarks belong to Google.
