Introducing TriRig 3.0
We are about to hit TriRig's 10-year anniversary. On July 1st, TriRig will be 10 years old! At (almost) the same time, we are launching our third major website platform, last updated seven years ago with version 2. Today, we are proud to announce version 3 of the website, and describe how that does (and mostly doesn't) change how you experience TriRig.
The most important thing we wanted to improve was the simplicity of browsing TriRig. Our homepage was cluttered, and it wasn't clear what we do, or what we offer. So, we have attempted to streamline and simplify every page of the site. That means eliminating any unnecessary borders, lines, separations, background images, etc. We aimed to make the site as clean and as simple as possible. No fancy plugins, no extra flourishes. Nothing to get in the way of you and the content. We want every reader and customer to be able to navigate TriRig in the most efficient way possible. So that meant eliminating and optimizing a lot of styling and code, and taking a hard look at all of our graphical content.
That brings us to the topic of our logo. It has been updated, and the new v3 logo is better than ever. The TriRig logo has gone through several iterations over the years. Take a look:
New Logo
In the image above, you can see the various TriRig logos, from 2010, to 2013, to 2020. The original was a text-only design, used for the first 3.5 years of our history. Then, one day sitting on a beach chair in Hawaii, I redesigned our logo, creating the TR icon that would become the brand's image for the next seven years, and continues today. At the same time, the 'tririg.com' text was updated to a newer and more modern font.
The 2013 logo was sleek and elegant, and did well for the web. It did its job, and would be enough for the next few years. But that text began to outlive its usefulness, because the thin, sparse typeface was not ideal for instant recognition for print on our products or signage. It was simply too skinny and difficult to read in certain applications. On the other hand, the TR icon was wonderful, and served that purpose perfectly.
So as the years went on, it became more and more apparent that we needed to update the typeface of the tririg logo. Today, we are thrilled to update that logo with a brand new, completely custom type that not only mirrors the styling of the existing TR icon, but will serve us into the foreseeable future as our brand's identity. We obsessed over this logo in Illustrator, ensuring that every shape, point, anchor, and handle was exactly what we wanted to create the perfect image.
Site Continuity
Paramount, for us, was ensuring continuity of the user experience. Every single page, going back to our very first article, is still easy to browse, and all links still work. Every page you have ever bookmarked or sent a friend will still work. We hate broken links, and we worked hard to ensure we have never had a single one, throughout our entire ten years of publication. That's a big deal!
Of course, not every page from the last 10 years will display perfectly. The images and text will always be reproduced. But some unicode characters might not be translated perfectly, and the content might not always appear the same way as intended for the original 1200px-wide screens that were common back in 2010. But for the most part, everything should be readable and usable. But if you see anything really weird, don't hesitate to let us know.
But the subject of continuity is not limited to avoiding 404 errors. We also want to make sure that every user, from the first-time browser to the 10-year fan, can browse the site easily and intuitively. So in this new v3, we have tried to keep things as simple as possible. Basically, we want you to know that we make products and we write articles. So we have tried to make that very clear both in navigation and in presentation, and to make it easy to find any product or article you want. We optimized column widths, borders, backgrounds, and more. Every page on the site was examined.
For those of you who like to get technical, there are a couple behind-the-scenes tricks you can use to navigate the site. First of all, we have very easy tag navigation. That is, every tag on the site is indexed, and can be searched with a simple root-level navigation. For example, if you want to read everything we have ever written about aerobars, simply point your browser to tririg.com/aerobars and it will show you every article ever tagged with 'aerobars'. Second, that same tag navigation makes it a snap to find any of our products. Heard about our Omega brakes? Just head to tririg.com/omega and that shortcut will point you right to the product page.
Whatever you think about the new logo, or the new site, we hope you continue to enjoy our writing, our designs, and everything unique that TriRig has to offer. Thanks so much for reading!
