SubscribeI’m as interested as anyone in the journalism world about the prospects for Apple’s iPad tablet to boost the fortunes of the news industry. A lot of hope rides on dreams like the Sports Illustrated prototype (video demo above). My friend Josh Quittner, editor-at-large with Time Inc., was on the development team for that project and shared some great inside scoop on the focus groups, particularly in how well tablet advertising was received by viewers/users. A lot of the media hype has centered on features of the device, the size, the battery life, rather than the realities of implementation for news products. To that end, here are some issues I haven’t heard much talk about: Read the full article »
Design With Reason
News Design, Redesign, and Rethinking With Consultant-Educator Ron Reason
Down with type abuse!
Newsrooms around the world have benefited from the typographic philosophies and sensibilities of Kimberly Elam, chairperson of the Department of Graphic & Interactive Communication at Ringling College of Art and Design. Her rules of typographic usage:
I WILL NOT stretch or squish type.
I WILL NOT outline type.
I WILL NOT stack type.
I WILL use prime marks and quotation marks appropriately.
I WILL appropriately use hyphens, en dashes and em dashes.
I WILL honor the classic families of type.
I PLEDGE not to commit crimes against typography.
Kim once asked me to take some time away from newsroom duties at the St. Pete Times to teach several courses in typography and graphic design studio at Ringling, and – with formal training only in journalism – I was quickly forced to absorb as much of her wisdom and teaching style as possible, to translate to the students. This clarity and structure in my thinking about type Read the full article »
Newspaper Redesign, 2010:
Start at the bottom line
Several encounters in recent months have prompted me to delve into the financial realities of the redesign process. (Did that get your attention?)
Case #1: In negotiating with a potential client, I asked the top editor: “What are your newspaper’s revenue projections for 2010?” (Meaning, say, are you aiming for an increase in revenue of 6 percent? Or perhaps to break even? Or maybe to lose just 2 percent instead of 15 percent?) His clipped response: “I don’t have anything to do with that side of things. The financial manager might have answers to that.”
This suggested a couple of things. The financial manager is not talking with the editor about things they need to be talking about, and the editor didn’t seem to be too concerned with how the journalistic (and staffing/budget allocation) decisions he was making weekly were resonating with advertisers.
Case #2: In one of my newsroom visits, I engaged a conference room full of very smart, cross-departmental minds in a conversation about ways to generate new revenue, turn around a trend of dismal monthly revenue reports (actually losses), and perhaps even save some of their jobs. One of the ideas floated was considering new kinds of sponsorships for editorial content or specific architectural destinations in the newspaper, with of course, a cautious eye toward ethics and values. While most (in particular the ad staff) seemed open to at least discussing the idea, several journalists bristled, Read the full article »
Inspiration for the new year: Type and Photo
The latest web effort from creative hub Behance, Served aggregates the best emerging design in five categories.
Inspiration for the new year: Magazine design
If you’re turned on by vintage and contemporary magazine cover design, and haven’t signed up as a Facebook friend of Bob Newman, you don’t know what you’re missing. With updates almost daily, the page boasts photo galleries of from a wide array of sources, including Village Voice and other alt weeklies, and classics from Fortune and Ramparts. Anniversaries such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the birthdays of Elvis and (!!!) Red Foxx also make their way into quirky galleries. Go here and click on “Become a Fan.” (Bob is the New York magazine design and art direction legend, and you can find out more about him on his personal website, robertnewman.com, where more of his exciting design work can be found.)
Logo redesign: Where to begin?
In most of my newspaper and website redesign projects, a redesign of the publication’s logo is a factor – sometimes the starting point. In a classic-style newspaper like The Dallas Morning News, you pretty much know you won’t fool around with the logo that much (though we did get away with a nice “cleaning up” of the old-style lettering by Jim Parkinson, who said the logo before the redesign looked like it had been “dipped in chocolate,” the letters had degraded that much over time).
In other titles, like the complete revamp of the Emirates Evening Post, there’s virtually no way you will stick with the old logo – not only is it an awful starting point, but the people behind the revamp want a completely new brand identity. So you start with a clean slate (a designer’s dream). See before/after, above.
Earlier this year I worked on a logo revamp for a newspaper in South Africa Read the full article »
‘What’s the biggest mistake designers make?’
The design mailbag weekly seems to offer up an inquiry such as this one, from Lucija Šilić, studying at Faculty of Graphic Arts, in Zagreb, Croatia:
“I am writing a thesis about evaluation criteria in newspaper and magazine design. I would appreciate if you can recommend some books, papers or web sites. (Of course, I always recommend my own website, www.ronreason.com, as a starting place.) and answer a few questions:
“What are your criteria when you evaluate newspaper or magazine design?
“What is, for you, the biggest mistake designers make?
My response to the two questions: As for the criteria for evaluating a design, one must look at the local marketplace, to see what is the position of the title in that community. Is it upscale? Downmarket? Serious? Playful? Understanding the mission and strategy of the publication, in its appeal to both readers AND advertisers, is essential. I usually ask to see recent and historical copies of the periodical I am evaluating, as well as current competitors in the marketplace.
The most common mistake I see in newspaper design is diving too soon into design solutions without understanding the above. Read the full article »
IFRA asks: What’s the state of news design?
Brian Veseling, Senior Editor of the IFRA magazine “Newspaper Techniques,” wrote recently to ask me a few questions about the state of the art of news design and redesign. Here are his questions and my answers:
1) How has newspaper design evolved in the past few years and how much do you expect it to change in the next two or three years? Do you expect the changes in the near future to be radical ones or more a matter of fine-tuning of what’s being done today?
How to reinstate/reinvent business coverage?
Received this inquiry from an editor at a 60,000-circulation daily:
“Ron – I was looking over your Web site. We are considering reinventing our daily and Sunday business pages and section. We are basically starting from scratch, since we have not put much emphasis on business coverage in the last few years.
“Do you know what newspapers are doing the best business page design that I should like at for ideas? I’m at the beginning stages of researching what other papers are doing. Thanks!”
Great photo blogs: Chicago, St. Pete
Want some quick inspiration about photojournalism and editing? And a few insightful words from the man behind it? Check out the wonderful photo blog shooting from the hip, by Chicago Tribune staffer Scott Strazzante. I often see his wonderful images in the paper and really enjoy the outtakes and observations he posts here, such as this post of images from the sky as he flew to assignment in Seattle.