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The Evolution of the Tumblr Dashboard

As part of a new initiative on Tumblr which I first mentioned in February, Tumblr has launched a new program called Storyboard. Storyboard is a regular collection of featured Tumblr content found in the community. One of the first posts on Storyboard is about the Tumblr Dashboard, which is very interesting.

If you are a Tumblr user, you should certainly know what the Dashboard is. If not, then to simply put it: it’s the user-facing home page, which distributes all the blog content that you subscribe to on the social blogging platform. The Tumblr Dashboard has had various changes over the past few years, which is detailed in the Storyboard post Peter Vidani on the Evolution of the Tumblr Dashboard.

In the Storyboard, Ministry of Design senior ministor Peter Vidani talks about how the Dashboard has evolved, and also speaks on the future of the Dashboard. Excerpt below, with the emphasis being mine on the part I particularly enjoyed.

We have fewer things you can click, and they’re bigger. We use 14-point font. Instead of just making a link clickable, they’re all blocks like you would see on a touch-device. When I look at other sites, they have a lot more things asking for your attention. As a result, everything’s smaller — small text, small icons.

Also our site is dark. Everything’s blue. If you look at it with a soft eye, the only thing that pops out is the post column. Posts are bright on that blue background and lifted up with shadows. I love that from a distance the site would look like it was only made up of posts. Another thing I love that we did recently was get rid of a highlight state in the right column. The selected tab used to be a big, green highlight, but now it’s a darker blue. We did that when we launched the new post icons. We should get rid of the Tumblr logo too. A table or a chair doesn’t have a logo on it. But when you drive a car, there’s a logo right on the steering wheel.