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CBC ARTS Reloaded
It’s finally here. The revamped national arts and culture multimedia portal we’ve been waiting for…CBC Arts. While TOist hasn’t actually been losing sleep anticipating the debut of the revamped site, we have been eagerly awaiting its unveiling. We had an inkling of what it might look like, because our own debut interview, Antony Hare, had some CBC arts portal designs up on his site. But we quickly brushed what we’d seen from our mind, wanting to see the whole thing properly done up with real copy.
The page opens with a nice illustration by the ubiquitous Jillian Tamaki (She’s had stuff everywhere from the New Yorker to Maclean’s in recent weeks). If it’s a subtle way of making us think print, well, it works. Taking a cue from Slate, it looks as if CBC Arts will be striving for legitimate arts magazine cred, albeit it with a few less highbrow twists (like the inaugural poll: Nickelback drummer Ryan Vikedal has left the band. How will they replace him? TOist’s answer: Who cares.)
What else? Great movie reviewing by the ever-reliable former Postie, Katrina Onstad (which is not to say that Liam Lacey hasn’t been doing a bang up job of late!), laudable attempts at quirk by Andre Mayer, and theatrestuffs from Alec Scott, theatrical type over at Toronto Life by day.
It’s not magical thinking just yet, but TOist thinks it quite promising. The bottom of the page looks thin, with large gaping holes of white between the links. But all of that could be easily recitified by blurbing the first sentence or so of every piece. No doubt the site’s design nuances need a bit of tuning, but in the meantime, we’re just glad not to have to read the same stale arts briefs for days on end. And pictures are nice too.