The South Florida Sun-Sentinel launched its redesign today. Charles Apple’s got every detail you’ll ever want to know.

And over at SportsJournalists.com, everyone’s got an opinion.

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The Orlando Sentinel debuted its redesign this morning. Charles Apple’s got images and thoughts.

The Wall Street Journal weighs in with a piece in Monday’s edition. (Tip: if you’re not a WSJ subscriber, go through Digg).

Past experience shows newspaper makeovers don’t necessarily translate into financial success. After the Bakersfield Californian underwent a drastic redesign two years ago, the 60,000-circulation paper in California’s Central Valley saw a small initial jolt to circulation and revenue, sparked by the brighter look and expanded coverage of hot topics like immigration. But the gains have been erased as the area economy struggles. Bakersfield Californian Chief Executive Richard Beene says the steps were necessary to keep the paper relevant, but he has advice for others considering a similar redesign: “Don’t expect it to turn around circulation or revenue overnight. It’s not a magic bullet.”

Consultant Alan Jacobson launched a broadside against the redesign Friday, saying it needed to “concentrate on content rather than cosmetics.”

In these troubled times for newspapers, it’s important to note that “readership” and “revenue” are conspicuous by their absence from virtually all the words that have been published about Orlando’s redesign. Instead, much has been made of the cosmetic changes to come.

And, of course, it wouldn’t be a redesign if somebody didn’t compare it to USA Today.

Update: And Mario Garcia writes about the black reverse nameplate.

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The Chicago Tribune will launch a redesign in mid-September, Editor Ann Marie Lipinski told the staff today.

"We are committed to determining the basic architecture and sectioning of the paper within 30 days; deciding on paging (how many and where) within 45 days; understanding our staffing levels throughout the paper in 60 days; and being ready to launch a rethought and redesigned Tribune within 90 days in mid-September."

Romenesko’s got the full memo.

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Charles Apple has the definitive post on the upcoming Orlando redesign, including a Q&A with Bo Burton, images, the works. So go there.

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Newspaper design legend Mario Garcia has entered the world of blog. It’s “about storytelling, design, the projects we work on, the things we learn along the way.”

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OK, here’s a passel of additional before-and-after Orlando prototype pages for the upcoming redesign, again thanks to Bo Burton. More pages after the jump.

Continue reading "More Ado About Orlando"

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Kevin Wendt, assistant managing editor for Sports, the Copy and Design desks at the San Jose Mercury News, is leaving the paper to become the editor of The Huntsville Times in Huntsville, Ala.

Wendt, 30, has filled numerous roles at the Merc, from Page One designer to assistant business editor, and spent two weeks helping the Sun Herald, a Knight-Ridder sister paper in Biloxi, Miss., with its Hurricane Katrina coverage, which won a Public Service Pulitzer. (Wendt was kind enough to share his Sun Herald experiences with this blog back in 2005.)

Good news for Kevin, but it’s another big loss for the Merc, which has seen a steady stream of talented folks leave in the past few years.

» Merc memo

» Huntsville Times memo

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So the Chicago Tribune’s Michael Tackett blogs today:

Just yesterday, according to the most reliable records on the subject, the death toll for U.S. forces in Iraq hit 4,000. The number was known quickly, the name of the fallen was not.

In very few places was the number even front page news in a war now five years old.

Among those “very few places” with a mention of the Iraq death toll on the front page: USA Today, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, Newsday, San Francisco Chronicle, Newark Star-Ledger, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Detroit Free Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Oregonian, San Diego Union-Tribune, St. Petersburg Times, Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, Kansas City Star, Indianapolis Star, San Jose Mercury News, Baltimore Sun, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Columbus Dispatch, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, San Antonio Express-News, Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, Charlotte Observer, Seattle Times, Tampa Tribune, Louisville Courier-Journal, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Cincinnati Enquirer and the Hartford Courant. As well as dozens of smaller papers.

Research! It’s what’s for dinner.

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Michael Bazeley, who worked at the San Jose Mercury News for 11 years, writes (prematurely, it is hoped) the paper’s obituary.

Managers from parent company Media News will continue to downsize the editorial staff until it’s down to several dozen people. (It’s at about 200 FTEs now, and will be 170 after Friday. New publisher Mac Tully has told the staff that downsizing could continue for the next 18-24 months.) They’ll consolidate the copy and design desks with their other Bay Area papers. They’ll work aggressively to get rid of union representation so they can bring salaries and benefits down to the substandard wages they are paying at their non-union papers. That will drive away whatever senior reporters are left, except those who are close to retirement (most of them are gone already) or who cannot find work elsewhere. And it will turn the paper into a waystation for young reporters looking to hone their skills and pad their resumes until something better comes along (being a mid-tier paper, that was already the case to some degree). The quality of the product will suffer.

Also, Ryan Sholin's advice: "So change. Or die."

Incidentally, the Merc reported today that enough employees took buyouts to avert layoffs.

Update: As Ashley points out, that story, though posted on the Merc's site, was from the Contra Costa Times and actually referred to other Bay Area publications owned by Media News Group. The Merc today laid off 15 in the newsroom and 19 from other departments.

» RIP Mercury News [Media Grunt: Michael Bazeley]

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Wow. Matt Mansfield, deputy managing editor and business development director at the San Jose Mercury News, is leaving the paper.

It’s also one of the hardest decisions I have ever made. Without question, I love the Merc: the work, the people, the place.

Leaving here will be a heartbreaking end to an amazing ride and, yet, the time feels right to exit. The buyout seemed an appropriate moment to hit the reset button.

I must admit to being more than a little sad right now, but I think that’s just because I’m nostalgic for a time that was, ultimately, unsustainable. That’s the difficult truth for many of us in newspapers right now.

What amazes me, looking back on it, is how much of myself has become tied up in my Merc personality. I’m humbled by the work we have been able to do here. And I’m genuinely indebted to my colleagues — present and past — who have worked tirelessly to make the Merc smart, successful and daring. They made me look good every day.

At our best, I hope we were able to set a pretty high benchmark.

Mansfield's also the vice president of the Society for News Design.

He says he's not quite sure what's next yet, other than finishing up some redesign work for the Merc and doing some consulting and traveling.

Matt's been a good friend of this blog over the years. Good luck, Matt! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

» He’s leaving the Merc: Matt Mansfield to exit [SND Update]

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Saturday was the Albuquerque Tribune’s last day. E.W. Scripps Co. determined the market could no longer support an afternoon paper and couldn’t find a buyer. The paper’s circulation in January had dwindled to 9,600 from 42,000 in the late ’80s.

The Trib long had a fine reputation as a visual paper. Here’s a slideshow with photos and words from Tribune photographers and editors. Go poke around the Trib’s site and read the remembrances, some of which I’ve linked below.

Incidentally, the guy at right in the 1994 page above is Tribune Managing Editor Neal Pattison, now executive editor at The Herald in Everett, Wash., and a former president of the Society for News Design. (And, full disclosure, the guy on the left is Tribune City Editor Michael Arrieta-Walden, who is now my boss.)

» Mike Davis: We set out to challenge readers and ourselves with the best pictures possible [Albuquerque Tribune]

» Mark Holm: Our photos hold up a mirror to the world and share the responsibility of reporting the news [Albuquerque Tribune]

» Eileen Welsome, Albuquerque Tribune made history with ‘The Plutonium Experiment’ [Albuquerque Tribune]

» Neal Pattison: Take a piece of my heart [Everett Herald]

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SND29: The 2007 World's Best-Designed Newspapers from Society for News Design on Vimeo.

The Society for News Design has announced the “World’s Best-Designed Newspapers.” They are:

• Akzia in Moscow, daily, circulation 200,000
• Expresso in Paco de Arcos, Portugal, daily, circulation 140,000
• Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Frankfurt, Germany, weekly, circulation 320,000
• The Guardian in London, daily, circulation 355,750.

More details, videos, etc., here.

Also, the full database of all SND winners is now online. Update: Well, I guess it's not anymore. Tomorrow, they say. Update2: It's up now!

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io9 has a roundup of sci-fi newspapers, including the one above from “Ultraviolet” about a Vampire Epidemic!!! Too bad most Hollywood movies can’t get their prop newspapers even close to looking right.

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The Chicago Tribune, following the industry trend, debuts a narrower page Monday. They're taking the opportunity to make a few design changes, not the least of which is to change the Page One nameplate. It's been reversed out of a blue field for the last 25 years, but no longer. Joe Knowles, the Trib's AME for design and graphics tells the SND Update blog that "it had become overpowering in a way. It was a difficult visual element to overcome on the page. The new one lets the content come forward." The nameplate was redrawn by Jim Parkinson.

They're also making some typographic tweaks and some other minor changes. Details here.

>Goodbye blue at the Chicago Tribune [SND Update]

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Newspapers & Technology reports that The Miami Herald is planning to outsource "some of its copy editing and page layout design work to Mindworks, a prepress production firm based in New Delhi, India." The company will oversee a weekly section of Broward County community news and other specialty advertising sections.

Wow. First I've heard of actual editorial design work being outsourced.

Update: I had previously linked to E&P, but it appears the report initiated with News & Tech, so I've changed the link. Thanks, Chuck!

Update 2:Robb points out this was an AP story on Dec. 27, noted, with the Herald memo, on Visual Editors. Hmm, trying to drop the bad news turd unnoticed in the middle of a holiday week. Where would a newspaper editor learn such a thing?

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I've put together the front pages of today's top U.S. papers plus several Iowa papers for your presidential campaign enjoyment. And remember, Mike Huckabee doesn't believe in evolution, only that there's a list of animals that Chuck Norris has allowed to live.

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I’ve collected some front pages on the Benazir Bhutto assassination, in international and U.S. flavors.

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Word came yesterday that Michael Whitley has been named Assistant Managing Editor for Design at the L.A. Times. Here’s a look back at the work Michael and his staff did during the fires in October.

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When’s the last time your front page nabbed a thief?

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The Washington Post debuted a new Style & Arts section on Aug. 26. It’s a merger of two regular Sunday sections.

Deputy Assistant Managing Editor for News Art Denny Brack and Style Design Director Martha Wright created the new design. Martha says:

Changes include enhanced Web keys, better use of color positions, more air on inside pages and the front, and frameless photos. Content is organized under Sounds (music), Stages (theater and dance), Screens (movies, TV, Internet) and Sights (the visual Arts). We've added Robin Givhan as a Sunday columnist, and created a Conversations page, anchored by a regular Q&A. There's also a Studio page, where local artists can explain their pieces in their own words. We'll have a doubletruck each week to showcase the work of staff photographers or take a closer look at other topics that demand that size and scope (normally it'd stand alone — happened to be a jump for our debut issue).

More pages after the jump:

Continue reading "Merging Style and Arts at the Post"

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Khoi Vinh, design director of nytimes.com (and SND Boston speaker) has a brilliant post that distills a lot of the thoughts about print designers and the web that have been banging around my skull for months. It's a must-read.

The prerequisite for doing something meaningful with any of these skills — HTML, CSS, Flash or whatever — is first embracing the medium as something different from print. Indeed, there's no point in learning these skills unless as a print designer you've made a prior shift in your understanding of how design works in digital media. Specifically, come to grips with the fact that, on the Web, design is not a method for implementing narrative, as it is in print, but rather it's a method for making behaviors possible.

More often than not, the reflexive approach that I've seen print designers take on the Web is to treat it as a vehicle for print-based design practices: fixing type sizes, specifying typefaces, ignoring usability and expediency, and perhaps most notoriously making the assumption that, over time, users will come around to a print-focused way of consuming content.

In my experience, none of those tactics work. Their all-around ill-suitedness tends to boil over to frustration when print designers realize that, by and large, there's little room for visual virtuosity online. Which is to say, the Web is not commonly an effective tool for highly expressive displays of typographic, photographic or illustrative skill. Looking for opportunities to execute the sort of improvisational and dramatic creative visions that we see in printed periodicals, for instance, is likely to be an exercise in disappointment.

I suspect this may be a bit of a preview of his SND Boston session "Print Vs. Online Design: Can a print designer find happiness online? Can a web designer learn from print?"

>This Way to the Web, Print Designers! [Subtraction.com]

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New York tabloid minds sure seem to be thinking alike these days.

June 20

July 22

Aug. 2

Aug. 4

Aug. 5

Aug. 9

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The Associated Press noted over the weekend that New Zealand newspaper publisher APN News & Media has started outsourcing copy editing and layout work at some of its newspapers, including the New Zealand Herald, the country’s largest daily.

Starting Sunday, 20 full-time sub-editors at contractor Pagemasters New Zealand will be “operating on an extension of APN’s ‘Cyber’ computer editorial production system” at a site 20 minutes from the paper’s editorial offices, [APN deputy chief executive Rick] Neville said.

By the end of 2007, Pagemasters will have about 45 editing staff at their site to edit the seven newspapers — nearly 30 fewer than the newspapers employed for the job.

To be fair, this doesn’t really look like a “copy editing/design sweatshop a continent away” type situation. Pagemasters New Zealand is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Australian Associated Press, and they put together TV listings, comics pages and feature packages, among other things. Not all that different from some of the services syndicates or newspaper chains offer in the U.S.

Still, this is an order of magnitude different than contracting out the TV book or using the occasional wire-service-provided layout. And hardly seems likely to improve more than the short-term bottom line.

“I’m confident readers won’t notice the difference,” said Neville, who has led the project.

Well, no, maybe they won’t. But is that really what we’re looking for in newspapers today? For our ever-dwindling number of readers to not notice what we’re doing? Seems to me that’s precisely what we want to avoid.

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The New York Times looks a bit more svelte today, rolling out its new 12" width, a 1½-inch reduction in width that brings the Times in line with most American broadsheets.

If you don't happen to have copies of the last two days' Timeses to compare, here's a goofy little animated GIF I cooked up that may give you some idea.

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Here are the front pages of the two Twin Cities papers today.

Good, prominent reefers to online coverage in the Strib and Pioneer Press. Even though that's sort of a sad admission that "yeah, this information you're reading is out of date." I like how the Strib sends you to a dedicated bridge coverage page that's got everything in one spot (and, interestingly, no ads).

Also, front pages from the Top 50 circ US dailies are here.

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Looks like ads may be coming to the front page of the Los Angeles Times, L.A. Observed says. In a memo to the staff, publisher David Hiller said the paper had “one of the worst quarters ever experienced,” and that the newspaper faces more competition for advertisers and is looking at “expanding the types and positioning of advertising.”

Here’s what Hiller said about the ads:

There has been a lot of focus on such ads, and I know there a real mix of views and emotions on this subject, so let me tell you what I think of them:

• Front page ads will raise several million dollars in revenue, and make a meaningful contribution to improving current trends
• We will make sure the revenue is additive, and not just switched from other pages
• They will help pay for the content we create for readers, and for our investment in new growth opportunities
• They are common at reputable papers across the U.S. and Europe, including in the Wall Street Journal’s much admired re-design
• Space taken (1 ½” strip) and related design issues can be managed
• We will have standards to ensure the ads look good, not schlocky
• If we communicate well, reader reaction should be OK

Update: As Anonymous points out, the Chicago Tribune reports that it will likely follow suit and that Newsday is considering it as well.

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Something to remember next time you're whining about the A/C in the office not keeping you quite cool enough: Richard Turley, art director of The Guardian's G2 magazine, has an excellent piece at Design Observer about putting together the section smack in the middle of the mud-filled Glastonbury rock festival last month.

It might have been repeatedly falling over in the mud. It might have been being lost and insignificant in the ocean of people of all ages, denominations, races, classes. It might very well have been the cider. Whatever or whenever it was, there was no other decision to be made. We were going off the grid. We were going off the grid in a big way.

Well, in truth, we were off the grid way before anyway. Designing 20-odd pages of a newspaper supplement from the middle of a field was already a challenge to technology, patience and the normal processes of producing G2. Usually, and quite rightly, newspaper design is bound by the conventions of its production and structure, by the fast turnaround of ideas that precludes against overtly expressive design, and by the formal traditions, craft and Victorian ideologies of the newspaper. News designers live very much on the grid, working from templates, tied by the rules of preassigned headline, text, caption sizes, precise spacing. It is an exacting, dictatorial, inherently rigid view of the world of design. The grid is the imperious king, with whom you do not mess.

>Richard Turley: Off the Grid [Design Observer]

(Thanks, Michael and Richard!)

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This is just the most awesomest thing ever. Scott Walker, an assistant managing editor at the Birmingham News, has hacked together an old newspaper box, a Mac Mini, and a flat screen monitor to create a digital newsstand that will grab pages from the internet and display them in the rack. Brilliant!

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The Toronto Star redesigned a couple weeks ago. (OK, three. Or so.) SND's Canada blog had some (more timely) coverage here and here. There's a new body face, Torstar Text, which is set at 10.25 on 11, as opposed to the old 9.9 on 10. The paper also will be gradually shrinking to a width of 11.5 inches between August and October. There's an online reader's guide here.

Antonia Zerbisias, the Star's media columnist, solicited some expert opinion about the redesign, including Lucie Lacava ("... less distinctive, more generic. Perhaps 'generic' is too harsh. It's been simplified a lot.") and Tony Sutton (Style: "very, very readable". Content: "... it looks like it's got less news in it.")

Here are some before-and-afters (afters on the right) with thanks to Assistant Managing Editor, Design Charlie Kopun:

More pages after the jump:

Continue reading "Toronto’s New Star"

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Here are some before-and-afters (afters on the right) of the Virginian-Pilot’s new design.

And here are some new inside pages:

Continue reading "Take Me to the Pilot"

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The Star-Telegram of Fort Worth launched a redesign on Sunday. They’ve narrowed the web width and turned Page One into a billboard for the rest of the paper.

In the four-page reader’s guide (PDF), Executive Editor Jim Witt writes:

You also need us to respect your busy life. Our quick-read formats will help you zero in on the information important to you, to speed you on your way. We think they also bring a jolt of energy and innovation to the paper.

The typography is Capitolium, Freight Micro, Freight Sans and Utopia.

This seems to be, in some ways, and extension of the paper’s 2004 redesign when the Sunday and Monday front pages became more teaser-oriented.

You can see what readers are saying about the changes here.

Here are some pages from the Sunday and Monday papers:

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The Globe and Mail, “Canada's National Newspaper,” (329,923 daily/416,584 Saturday) launched a redesigned newspaper today, the culmination of a two-year “reimagination” process. Says Editor-in-Chief Edward Greenspon:

We wanted to be smarter, more accessible, more Web-paper integrated and more visually oriented.

Oh yes. And we didn’t want to give up an inch of ground on the qualities (strong reporting, great writing, seriousness of purpose) that have made The Globe and Mail an important part of Canadian society for more than 160 years.

They’ve trimmed the page-width down to 12 inches and commisioned new typography from Toronto type designer Nick Shinn: Globe and Mail Sans, Globe and Mail News and Globe and Mail Text.

They’ve also added a new lifestyle section, Globe Life, shifted business agate to the web and launched ReportonBusiness.com. Here’s the half-page guide to the redesign published in today’s paper (PDF here).

The redesign was an in-house job by a team led by Editorial Design Director David Pratt and Assistant Art Director David Woodside.

Here are some pages from today’s edition, courtesy of Michael Bird, Deputy Managing Editor, Presentation and Editing.

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L.A. Times Creative Director Joe Hutchinson will become the art director of Rolling Stone, L.A. Observed and the SND blog are reporting. The New York Post said last month that Hutchinson turned the job down, but he’s reported to have reconsidered in the face of news that the Times will cut its workforce by 5 percent (150 positions, 70 of those from the newsroom), mostly through buyouts.

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Striking front page by the Virginian-Pilot today. And a gutsy editorial choice.

Also, Pilot editor Denis Finley defends the photo choice on the Tuesday front page.

Update: Pilot design team leader Paul Nelson on how the page came together.

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I’ve collected some front pages of the Virginia Tech massacres. Here are some Virginia front pages, here are the top 50 U.S. papers and some international papers. Update: I've added The Collegiate Times (above), the student newspaper at Virginia Tech. (Thanks, Colin!)

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The Chicago Sun-Times launched a redesigned, more locally focused paper today.

As evidenced by the emphasized "Chicago" in the flag, they're beefing up their local orientation and adding more features such as
"Chicagopedia," a dictionary of Chicago words; "This Much I Know" where "interesting people tell you their secrets to a good life;" and "24/7," a 24-hour crime and mayhem roundup. The Sun-Times has been struggling in the Chicago market. Sun-Times Media's revenue fell 8.6% last year compared with the Tribune's 1.3% drop.

As far as the design, it will "make it more accessible, more modern and more readable for you, the reader. Because it's all about you."

Here's a guide to the new features. (Same thing here in a one-page PDF.)

Sun-Times advertising/marketing columnist Lewis Lazare writes:

Unexpected and uniquely local news stories will get top priority in the refreshed newspaper, which some ads in the rebranding campaign will reference as reflecting the "real Chicago."

Reflecting the increasing importance of the Web as a news resource, many stories will encourage readers to jump to the Web for additional specific content that might be tightly focused on Chicago — such as highly localized neighborhood guides — or links to the Web's best content on a range of topics.

Former Sun-Timeser Robb Montgomery's got a podcast interview with Editor Michael Cooke and Kenney Marlatt at SND posts a link to a video by Publisher John Cruickshank.

Outside reaction is starting to come in. Alan Jacobson says it's "one of the best redesigns seen in years."

With all the vim and vigor of Bakersfield, KC and Norfolk, the redesigned Sun-Times is bound to get some eyeballs, making the Chicago Tribune or award-winning Mercury News look like your father's Oldsmobile.

But my old friend Steve Rhodes, a veteran Chicago media observer and proprieter of the excellent Beachwood Reporter, is less taken with it:

Ho-hum. While there are some decent elements, it still looks like a dowdy newspaper. And those full-length photos of columnists are nothing but a distraction. But the real problem is one that every redesign faces — that old lipstick on a pig thing. Unfortunately, nobody wants to improve the pig. It's not that hard to understand. Campbell's can change the label all they want, but if their soup still sucks, their soup still sucks. If the Sun-Times — or any paper — wants more readers, you have to make a better newspaper (website not only included, but emphasized). And making a better, must-read newspaper means quality journalism, not "Chicagopedia" entries that purport to explain what words such as "buddy" mean in to people who live here. Redesigns always work around the edges, and in areas like packaging health and shopping news, but never seem to spark better ways to actually report on the city — and that's the guts of any newspaper. Just once I'd like to see a redesign that also gamed out an investment and redeployment of reporters throughout the city, instructed reporters to always wonder during an interview why they're being lied to, and, say, mandated that each reporter file at least one Freedom of Information request a month. That would be a newspaper that would show readership gains.

Also, a couple weeks ago, Rhodes reported:

When asked why the paper didn't invest more in the paper's website, Editor-in-Chief Michael Cooke was heard to say that nobody believes what they read on the Internet.

Yeah, that's the spirit!

Here are more pages from today's paper:

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Poynter introduced the major findings (video; text script here) of its latest EyeTrack study at ASNE last week, and it’s getting a lot of pixels, mostly because it suggests that people read more of a story online (77 percent) than in print (62 percent broadsheet, 57 percent tabloid).

Other interesting findings:

• Alternative story forms seem to result in greater comprehension and 15 percent more visual attention (30 percent in broadsheet) than traditional narrative forms.


• Large photos and headlines draw the eyes in print, but online, navigation bars, teasers and story lists get primary attention.


• Color photos and live, documentary news photos got more attention than staged photos.

Alan Jacobson, for his part, is unimpressed and says that if we want to boost readership, what we really need to is find out why people read what they choose to read and not simply how much of it they read.

Our research shows that content selection is the number one driver of readership, and that relevant content about pocketbook issues and health/personal safety trumps all other kinds of stories, regardless of form.

Eyetrack07 does not include any consideration or evaluation of these content-based issues. It's limited to what people look at rather than why they read.

The full report will be released in June.

One thing to note about their “people read more online” stats: The sites they studied, StarTribune.com and sptimes.com, tend not to split stories into many pages, unlike others. I gotta think that’s gonna have an effect.

By the way, kudos to Will Sullivan for illustrating his post mentioning EyeTrack with the perfect image.

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XPress, a new Garcia Media-designed weekly tab in Dubai, launched on March 15.

Mario Garcia says:

The culture of the “always on” thrives on high tech and all the gadgets that surround it — from mobile telephone news alerts and text messages to emails, photos and video clips. Many members of the “always on” generation start feeling neglected if ten minutes go by and they have not received a text message or email from anyone.

So it is within the framework of this modern reader/user that your new Xpress has been carefully crafted. The newspaper in front of you today emphasizes the techniques of modern newspaper rethinking:

1. Ease of navigation.
2. A two-track approach to news and feature presentation.
3. A small format that is easier to carry and to manage.
4. Color-coding to identify sections.
5. Innovative advertising positioning

Some pages from the March 22 edition (and more after the jump):

Continue reading "Dubai’s Express"

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I’ve been meaning to link to the live blogging my pals Matt Mansfield and Jonathon Berlin have been doing over at the SND Update blog from the Malofiej International Infographic Awards in Pamplona. And now, well, they’re done. And the awards have been announced. The highest award, the Peter Sullivan Prize, goes for the first time to an online entry, The New York Times’ awesome interactive Sector Snapshot. The Times also won a Gold for their Election 2006 interactive graphics. Other Gold winners were Clarin (Argentina), Expresso (Portugal), San Jose Mercury News (U.S.), The Oregonian, (U.S.), Dagens Nyheter (Sweden), The Guardian (UK), Welt am Sonntag (Germany), Mundo Estranho (Brazil) and National Geographic (U.S.)

SND has the entire award list (PDF) and the online awards (PDF w/links).

Also, Charles Apple has been blogging for days from the Publish Asia conference in Manila.

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The Society for News Design has got themselves one of them interweb-log deals. Many updates about society doings and other things of interest. So hop into one of those internet tubes and head over there.

>SND Update: The Blog [SND.org]

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The San Antonio Express-News has changed up its front page, saying it needs to reflect the reality of readers being "more informed, more wired &emdash; and yes, much more busy taking it all in."

There's an "interactive" graphic online that briefly explains the changes.

"Change comes today with a new format designed around two key goals. First, we are providing readers with a larger menu of items, allowing the front page to be a better window into the rest of the paper. Second, we're doing more to emphasize and develop our best story of the day, focusing as much as possible on local news you won't find anywhere else."

And here, from Paul Wallen of the San Diego Union-Tribune, is a Q&A with Dean Lockwood, design director at the Express-News:

From the home office in San Diego, the Top 5 questions about the new San Antonio Express-News front page:

5.) There seem to be three central ideas in the new Express-News front page format: A pair of rails that you're calling "zippers," a "tab on broadsheet" emphasis above the fold and a promo at the top that focuses on selling one inside story in a big way, rather than a variety of inside content. Can you provide some background on each of these changes and the goals behind them?

Those are the key themes. The promos were an easy call -- our promos the last few years have been weak mainly because too much junk was being shoved into them -- too many topics and too many words. The more stuff in there, the busier they got and they less effective they were. Really, the promo should be viewed as a kind of advertisement. So our new promos will feature a single item, strong. They also won't follow any kind of template. Other than general font choices, it will be a different approach every day. Adrian Alvarez, who joined the paper midway into the front-page development process, took the lead on the new promo looks. He's really brought a fresh energy to them.

The zippers (these things just gotta have goofy catch names, I think) were a challenge. We've never been a "rail paper" but with the new emphasis on the web and multiple "hits," we knew we'd have to get on board with this in some form. Honestly, I started playing with two narrow rails just for the novelty -- I don't think anyone else is doing it. (Hmm … perhaps there's a reason for that?) At first it was just to see if I could make it work visually. But as I played with it, it started making more sense. We gave each zipper it's own mission. The left one is basically our hard news briefing while the right one is a bit of a catch-all. A home for the "fun" news stuff, utility info like sports scores and, of course, online promotion. That all worked itself out pretty easily. Designing the news between the zippers was a bit more of an adventure, and it produced an unexpected benefit.

The whole "tab on broadsheet" thing was an unexpected result of flanking both sides of the page with the zippers. I found I couldn't design the 1A lineup the same way -- with semi-strips, "muted" lead stories and all those other compromise things we do to parse the play of the news each day. The zipper format started forcing me into making a commitment to one or maybe two items up top. A bit like a tabloid makes a choice on its story of the day. The more I thought about that, the more I thought that was a good thing. We're a broadsheet, of course, so we have room for a few more stories. But in general, we're going to try to emphasize our best local story strong up top each day. Adrian Alvarez really gave me the confidence to really push this.

4.) You have been prototyping published lineups in preparation for launching the new format. What kind of challenges did you face as you went through that process?

Between myself and Adrian, there was a good bit of prototyping. And you know what? It was HARD. Much harder than I thought it would be. All the "rules" for designing a broadsheet front just didn't seem to work. It really is like desiging in a different page format. The biggest thing we noted was the need to go relatively simple and clean on the down-page stories. There's just so much "stuff" on this page that we're really cognizant of the junk factor. We'll have to watch that a lot.

3.) What kind of flexibility has been built into the new format to handle different types of news days or breaking news?

Well, our flexibilty was tested on the very first night -- got live, very vertical art -- naturally, something we hadn't prototyped! Maybe not quite the package I would have liked to have wrestled with on the first night, but I think we pulled it off. Beyond that, the whole idea of "zippers" was for flexibility. One or both can zip down to accommodate big news play. Other papers have similar policies for their rails. My best, unintentionally funny quote came while trying to explain what sorts of news would warrant lowering the zippers: "Castro dies -- zippers go down." Yes, I said it. In a room full of editors. Took me a good 10 seconds to figure out what all the smirking and snickering was about.

2.) Does the new format represent any changes in content and editing, or is it strictly a change in how the front page is being packaged for readers?

It calls for a lot of changes in thinking, mostly. Especially about our 1A lineup -- and about what constitutes a "lead story." A traditional broadsheet format provides lots of compromise possibilities for editors. This format (as with a tabloid) forces us to make a commitment. That's very different thinking. The zippers provide a logistical challenge for our copy desk. They've reorganized to have a page one editor dedicated each night to focus on the lead package and the zippers info.

1.) And the number one question is … The opening statement in your users guide describes this as "the most fundamental format change in modern Express-News history – way bigger than Wingo." What is Wingo, and what kind of impact has it made on the Express-News?

Hah! That's an inside joke. In fact, I'm not sure if some of our younger designers will even have a clue about that. Years back, when this was a two-paper town, the Express-News was locked in a death match with the San Antonio Light. Wingo was a bingo-like game that was promoted brazenly on the front page. Tacky as all get-out -- but apparently it worked, as the Light eventually went down for the count.

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LA Observed notes today that over the weekend the LA Times has scaled back some of the front-page typography that was changed last fall, apparently eliminating the Titling Gothic Compressed and some of the stacked decks. He also says Times editor Jim O'Shea was seen escorting around Tony Majeri, design legend and former Chicago Tribune senior editor for innovation a couple weeks back.

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The Arizona Republic has retooled its Monday newspaper "for busy people," editor Ward Bushee says.

Luke Knox of the Republic says the new Monday edition features

... shorter stories, more short-form information and content to help readers kick-start their week. It's basically the antithesis of the usual Monday product you may find from a number of papers, filled with retread stories and no real news to sink your teeth into.

The new Monday Republic is compressed into three sections: an expanded A section that includes the Valley & State and Biz sections folded inside, an expanded Sports section, and an expanded Features section. Section fronts have one, (mostly) non-jumping story and a series of lists, refers and other devices to get the reader into the section.

Redesign work was done primarily by Tracy Collins and Bill Pliske, and executed by the design staff.

Nice work. I'm guessing that ad at the top left of the front page sticks in a few craws, though.

>Today's edition designed for busy people [Arizona Republic]

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Mint, a new financial daily in India, launched in print and online today. Garcia Media did the design for both the print and online products. Mario Garcia writes about his approach to the design:

1. It should be colorful, like India itself.


2. Ideally it should be in a small format -- we did versions of broadsheet and Berliner, and opted for the smaller, easier to handle format.


3. It must have perfect fusion with the online product. And, in fact, I recommended from the start that this product should appear FIRST as an online newspaper, and then two weeks later on print. That is the way it will be. This newspaper is born as an online product.


4. There should be substance, but also quick reads.


5. Navigation should be paramount.

>Mint [Garcia Media]
>Have a (live) Mint [Garcia Media]

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I’ve been negligent in linking to this, but be sure to check out Alan Jacobson’s excellent new(ish) Best Front Design feature. He looks at a selection of the day’s pages and analyzes why he thinks they work (or not!). And now that he’s got commenting enabled, it’s even excellent-er.

(This link has nothing to do with the fact that he picked my newspaper’s front page today. Really. I had nothing to do with the page anyway. Really!)

Update: Jacobson and Quark are going to award $1,000 in cash and more than $1,000 in Quark software to the designer of the best front page every month. January's winner is Robert Suhay of Norfolk's Virginian-Pilot.

>Best Front Design (Brass Tacks Design)

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Los Angeles Times Editor James O’Shea on Wednesday announced major changes on the horizon for the paper, including a redesign. If you seem to remember that the Times just redesigned part of the paper recently, you’d be right. But this, O’Shea says, will be a “real redesign.”

I am going to establish a second working group from the newsroom to help me with another major challenge we face, redesigning the print newspaper to make it an effective backbone for latimes.com.

Sometime this fall, the Los Angeles Times, like every other major paper including the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and others, will adapt a 48-inch press web that will create a newspaper that will be slightly narrower than the one we currently publish.

There is no stopping this conversion. The entire industry is moving that way. Even if we were not going to make any newsroom changes, the new press web width would probably require a redesign.

This time, though, we are going to do a real redesign, one that questions and challenges every section of the newspaper, a redesign that relates individual sections to the newspaper as a whole.

This effort will come from within the newsroom. We will lead it, but we will also include in our working group some thoughtful colleagues from outside the newsroom, people who have expertise and experience in areas unfamiliar to journalists.

Ideally I would like to take a year to rethink everything we do. But we don't have the luxury of that much time. Innovation is something we have to do in the newspaper every day. It is an ongoing process.

So we probably will do a phased redesign that will play out over the next year. The redesign working group will work this out.

>Editor James O’Shea unveils Web initiative at Times [L.A. Times]
>James O’Shea’s address to Times staff [L.A. Times]

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Here are some before-and-afters from the Rocky Mountain News. New pages on the right. In the larger images I’ve adjusted the new pages to reflect the smaller size. Update: Also, the Rocky’s opened up access to its electronic edition until midnight Friday, so take a look for yourself.

Update2: Roger Black weighs in in the comments on the previous post.

There are actually many spreads in the paper, particularly at the front of each section , which you don't show, and neither does the web site's ActivePaper PDF reader. But if you see the printed edition, the size, the layout-as-spreads, the increased color, the no-jump booking, the more informal headlines style, it begins to look like a magazine.

<snip>

John Temple has been talking about the redesign on his blog for months, and there have been many opportunities for readers to tell the paper what they want, and they have. The little poll on the logo development is part of a continuing process to bring readers in on the defintion of the Rocky brand. The question here is, "Is it The Rocky or is it Rocky Mountain News?" The staff is extremely interested to see how people react to that, because they went pretty far down the road (as you can see) to actually changing the name of the paper. And the defnition of a brand is never finished, nor is a paper's design. These are processes, not events.