The gratuitously large amount of whitespace in comments pages is a little off-putting. The very, very light gray meta-info text on white bg is hard to read in the comments container; as is the kind-of-blue text on light blue bg. The icons are not descriptive enough as stand-alones to exist without text indication of what they do, or something similar.
So basically, this is just walking into the 'flat' fad without any careful thought. I'm just in disbelief. I'm primarily a back-end coder but I've designed better sites than this.
Edit: I realize I'm being a little bit mean, and I don't like being mean... but I think it's perhaps warranted this time given the name of the site.
I agree that we need to keep contrast in mind when designing, but too much contrast can be just as hard on the eyes. That cream on black text hurts my eyes more than most of the low-contrast sites that it highlights. Furthermore, putting shadows on an entire block of text is terrible for legibility. As a site focusing heavily on legibility, it could certainly use some fine-tuning in its typography and color.
I will agree that many of these sites, including this DN site, need to work on contrast and legibility and contrast.
So basically, this is just walking into the 'flat' fad without any careful thought. I'm just in disbelief. I'm primarily a back-end coder but I've designed better sites than this.
Edit: I realize I'm being a little bit mean, and I don't like being mean... but I think it's perhaps warranted this time given the name of the site.