After having gone on numerous rants about how awesome European news design is and having confirmed my love by actually visiting Europe this summer (and therefor seeing these papers in my hands), I have finally made the plunge.
After seeing the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s redesign this summer, I dropped all hesitation. I absolutely loved the look and if one mainstream American newspaper could pull this great look off, I had to try it.
As the new managing editor of The Daily Eastern News, I was able to accomplish, with the help of my advisers and faithful Editor in Chief, a (successful) total redesign of the paper.
Most of the touches are entirely inspired by the international (or modernist or swiss or whatever you want to call it) style most papers around the world now adhere to.
Here is today’s front page.
This page was entirely designed by one of our nightly copy editors/designers. She has minimal experience and yet she was completely capable of producing a pleasant front page with little creative effort.
The redesign, introduced in August, is entirely grid-based. Front page sections are 16 columns and inside pages are 15. This ultimately amounts to 5 columns of text. The additional column on the front sections is in order to allow a wider rail or grid-based white space. Unfortunately, this formula was impossible to impose on inside pages with designers who have possibly never touched Indesign.
Each story is accompanied by a thick horizontal rule above, a label, and a headline with 1p6 to 2 picas of space below. This simple tool has allowed white space to be injected into the core of the design and created headlines with more punch at smaller point sizes.
Three typefaces are at our disposal, with only one change from the previous design’s selection: Lucida Bright as our various headers font. Adobe Garamond Pro and Myriad pro round out the body and smaller type fonts.
Further, a new page planning philosophy has been implemented. Where art use to be the dominant factor in where news went, we have strict in placing the most important news up top. Art is secondary in the decision-making process. The new design can carry a page with little-to-no art and still maintain sturdy immediacy.
As a result, pages have maintained a consistency throughout the paper and copy editors can worry about editing copy. Creativity is always encouraged, but not a necessity (or even a possibility, most of the time, for our inexperienced staff) to creating a useful page. And while this has resulted in some very similar layouts in particular situations, the focus on utility has outweighed any negative results.
Here are a couple pages that I designed (a rarity) for our annual Family Weekend issue.
The bottom page is from our arts and entertainment section in that same issue.
I plan on tweaking the design a bit before graduating this December, because there are a few issues that consistently pop up. Mostly in the way of pull quotes and breakout boxes — our current style requires one too many steps (note: exactly two steps). However, I am otherwise extremely pleased with the new design. I think it suits us in nearly every way and provides the utility a college paper craves.
Let me know what you think.
Filed under: Editoral, Graphic, My Work, Newspapers, Print, School , Newspapers, Personal, Print, Projects, School, Tabloid
