The Big Blue Box – Now with a New Coat of Paint

After a good year or so of planning, rethinking, designing, tinkering and occasionally starting again from scratch, I’m really happy to finally roll out the brand new design for The Big Blue Box.

First of all, Happy New Year to you all, especially if this is your first visit to The Big Blue Box since the beginning of 2026. New readers & listeners or the long-timers (the Grizzled Ancients!) – welcome! As you can see, things look a little different here as we fly into the New Year.

I re-designed it (v2) in ~2018, and I liked the result at the time. It has served us well as writers, and while I had no huge complaints, it had started to look old and knackered, a bit like the TARDIS towards the end of the Fifth Doctor’s era. Also, technically, it was a bit Day of the Doctor and, by that I mean, it was good but with a few niggles.

It was definitely time for our website to regenerate into a shiny new version. Let’s dive in a little more.

Why the redesign?

Well, first of all, it’s been nearly a decade since the last iteration, and website design and development have moved on a lot since then. For those who don’t know, outside of running The Big Blue Box, my day job is as a designer and developer. This means I’m always designing and building things for other people, but alas, not as often for my own projects.

As the intro paragraph noted, I’ve been designing and tinkering for a couple of years now. As time cruelly and relentlessly sped by, I needed to act. So, over the last six months, I’ve put my foot down and prioritised it.

Secondly, the site has grown in many ways; more content (both podcast episodes and way more articles), more contributors, and a much broader spread of Doctor Who coverage. The redesign felt overdue as we grew (and continue to grow). It means we can serve the writing team’s needs and, most importantly, provide a much better experience for you, the reader.

The new design has one simple goal: make it easier and more enjoyable to find and consume our content. To do this, literally everything has been re-designed: colours, fonts, buttons, links, layout, imagery, brand refresh, etc. It’s all new. Technically, it’s been rebuilt from the ground up to make sure it’s (hopefully) lean, performant and fast.

The headlines

• You’ll find a brand new page called Reviews Compendium. This is something people have requested for years! It pulls together all of our podcast reviews into a single, searchable table, showing the episode, its score, and the corresponding TV story. If you’ve ever wanted to quickly check how we rated a particular story, this is for you.
• Easier ways to find content. More sections with various categories and themes to explore, a new search experience and more content on display overall.
• Better ways to continue reading or listening. Suggested articles below each article, our most popular articles, and better signposting around the site.
• A bit more insight into our wonderful team. New pages with info on their favourite Doctor, story, bio and all of their articles.
• Some custom artwork scattered throughout by yours truly.

There’s been plenty of work on smaller technical updates that help surface more useful information. Clearer metadata, smarter content blocks, tags, etc, all designed to add context without getting in the way of your reading or listening experience.

There are also a few whimsical tidbits dotted around to round off the experience.

The aim was to create something that feels modern, clean, and distinctly Doctor Who x Big Blue Box. A site that reflects where we are now, while giving us room to grow.

Talking of growing, we’re possibly looking at taking on a new writer or two this year, so if you want to be part of a cool Doctor Who hobby project and have decent writing skills, have a look at the team openings page and get in touch.

Much More to Come

In closing, we’re very happy with the new design. We hope you’ll have fun diving into our Doctor Who content. There are loads on here already, and we’ve got even more content lined up. I’m genuinely excited to finally share this next chapter of The Big Blue Box with you all.

If you find any glitches or weirdness while looking at this new version, get in touch, and I’ll get rid of those pesky Cybermats!

Happy reading and listening!

Garry

P.S. There are a few formatting issues in some posts that are left over from the previous design. We’ll iron these out over the coming weeks.