Over at Tokyopop, company founder and president Stu Levy has just posted a screenshot of the new and improved web interface that Tokyopop plans to unveil in the early summer:

From a design perspective, the new website is a marked improvement. The eyeball-bending color scheme has been muted; the publication calendar has been rescued from invisibility and placed squarely near the center of the page; and the social networking functions have been given a simpler, more attractive interface. I’m delighted to see that Tokyopop listened to the old curmudgeons like me who felt that the site placed too much emphasis on user-created artwork and blogs but not enough on Tokyopop’s own products. I’m also glad to see that there is now just one navigation bar for the site (instead of three, as in the current design); casual users should have an easier time locating the information they want.

What I don’t like about the site are the gimmicky labels that Tokyopop has assigned to the buttons on the navigation bar. They seem like the handiwork of a marketing consultant, rather than someone who actually uses websites. I’m guessing that anyone clicking on “Stars” would be lead to the site’s social networking functions, but that’s not immediately obvious. And what about the equally puzzling labels “Art” and “Life”? Will those lead to more pages of user-generated content, or do those lead to materials promoting Tokyopop’s products? In the interest of common sense, it seems that some slightly squarer labels would make this navigation more effective as, well, a tool for navigating the site:

COLUMNS//MANGA//MOBILE//NOVELS//WHAT’S HOT

Or something along those lines.

That said, I think that Tokyopop is on the right track here. It’s easy to grumble about the “OMG!!!! FRUITZ BASKET IS DA BEST!!!!!!” blog entries and pilfered deviantArt at the site, but there’s some smart thinking behind the TokyoSpace concept: train folks to visit your site regularly, and they’re more likely to learn about your products, buy them, and maybe even spontaneously promote them to other like-minded consumers. Now if we could just get DJ Milky to stop abusing the formatting feature in his blog…