When you combine two differents web design patterns you can get either a mess or a really interesting new element: in this case, Stuff‘s menu gets a compact and solid appearence, having shifted the properties pertaining to breadcrumbs trail to the horizontal menu.

As you can see, home page’s rainbowy menu (at the top of the screenshot) introduces the color code that constitutes the basics of this website’s information architecture. When you’re in a main section (at the bottom of the screenshot), the menu splits up into two rows: the first one works as breadcrumbs/page title, the second one displays a list of available subsections.

For those who don’t already know it, Stuff is

New Zealand’s award winning news and information website, bringing together the vast resources of Fairfax New Zealand Ltd several hundred journalists and photographers around the country to provide a single online ‘publication’.

Which briefly means: a fresh news portal that provides informations in a kick-ass package.