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Welcome to The Manual Redesign

Dear Manual Men,

You may have noticed a few changes around The Manual lately—and for good reason. We listened to our readers’ comments and opinions and have used that feedback as the basis for our entirely redesigned site. We hope you like the fresh, modern look of the page that we feel reflects the style and aesthetic of a modern man living, working, and playing in this hectic 21st century.

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We’ve lightened the color scheme to bring you a brighter and more user-friendly experience, drawing attention to each article with a clear, image and a catchy title. As a result, we hope your browsing on The Manual becomes one of the easiest and favorite parts of your day.

Beyond our crisp new look, we’ve also done some refiguring under the hood which should make your reading and perusing experience simpler, easier, and much more visually appealing. We’re piggybacking on our brother site, Digital Trends’ platform and we couldn’t be happier.

All the features you see on Digital Trends will eventually find their way to The Manual, including interactivity and fully-formed gallery posts, so we can do away with the long scroll. We hope this reconfiguration will also help reduce loading speed time, letting you get to the information you want to read faster and more efficiently.

We also listened to your feedback about content and have made the editorial decision to both increase our content in general and improve the quality of the content we produce. Expect more interviews, how-to’s, and longform pieces in the coming weeks and months. We will still produce our regular features such as New Music Monday, Feel-Good Fridays, and fashion and product round-ups, but we thought it might be fun to try out the whole journalism thing. Let us know how we are doing by emailed us at support@themanual.com.

-Cator Sparks
Editor-in-Chief

P.S.- We just posted our 5,000th post!

Cator Sparks
Former Former Digital Trends Contributor, The Manual
Cator Sparks was the Editor-in-Chief of The Manual from its launch in 2012 until 2018. Previously, Cator was covering…
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