Information Architecture: It's very difficult to decide what to read. There is no hierarchy of content. Should I read the left column, or right? Very overwhelming.
Typography: The text is too large and in-your-face. Text is meant to be read, not looked at. This makes it hard to quickly scan the content and focus.
Spacing: The site feels very cramped resulting from the layout and text size. It could benefit from some white-space.
Aesthetic: Harsh gradients, weird header and footer "angular" thing, non-harmonious colors, etc. There's a difference between "intentional ugly" and poor visual taste. This is the second.
I could go on, but it's not very important as this is purely my opinion. Chris does a fine job managing the site and this has nothing to do with him personally. Simply, my observation and feeling.
I rarely spend time on the home page, though, so the typography and layout of the article pages is most important to me. I didn't immediately notice, but I do think the articles feel more cramped (I wonder if the line-heights are actually smaller).
Information Architecture: It's very difficult to decide what to read. There is no hierarchy of content. Should I read the left column, or right? Very overwhelming.
Typography: The text is too large and in-your-face. Text is meant to be read, not looked at. This makes it hard to quickly scan the content and focus.
Spacing: The site feels very cramped resulting from the layout and text size. It could benefit from some white-space.
Aesthetic: Harsh gradients, weird header and footer "angular" thing, non-harmonious colors, etc. There's a difference between "intentional ugly" and poor visual taste. This is the second.
I could go on, but it's not very important as this is purely my opinion. Chris does a fine job managing the site and this has nothing to do with him personally. Simply, my observation and feeling.