Post redesign - 32 days to go
Coming towards the end of an 11-hour day working through the 1001 things I need to do before The Post relaunches as a compact on Monday October 20. Sometimes the days pass quickly and much is achieved and sometimes I seem to work flat out and still only clip a few things off the list.
Today has been quite productive
My work is all done in a large office tucked away round several corners on floor one. It used to be a store room for our library, and has three ante-rooms off it. I have taken over one side of it, and now have lighting and on-line Pcs - and a view across the car park.
It is very cold, but very quiet, so I can at least get on with my work.
Our designer, Terry Watson, has set out the design for all types of Post pages: news, features, business, sport, listings etc and I have converted them into InDesign, which is the programme we use to draw the Post pages. Fonts have been changed and slight tweaks made, but Terry's design underpins the whole thing. The front page is looking like this:
I think it looks classy, confident and bright, with lots of space to give stories the space they deserve. But one main reason for doing this blog is that I really hope people will tell me exactly what they think. Great, awful, progress or sacrilege...let me know and we can talk about it.
My time today has been spent starting the process of unravelling each page so that it can be made into templated designs and text instructions. This means our sub editors - they are now multi-media production journalists (MMPJs) - can click a button and text will turn into a style I have set out, for captions, lead headlines, sports results, shares listings - anything we need. There will also be dozens of whole pages saved as templates so that planners can bring in a design and fill it with new stories. As long as there are enough variations, the pages can look as bright and sharp as any others, but are so much easier to assemble.
I have also had a chat with Terry about a possible change to the headline font (what do you think?) had a meeting about how our new folios (the page number and dateline at the top of the page) are handled and I have just been taught how to put this photo on the page (I hope it has worked!) and how to take pictures with our new Nokia n95 phones and upload them on to the web as well.
Actually, quite a busy day. I'll update things as often as possible - and may even find time to tell you about the Post Ghost I encountered in this room a few nights ago......
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I don't think fiddling round with fonts is going to make a great deal of difference. After a few weeks readers forget what the old paper looked like. And having invested much time and energy papers are unable to admit they got it wrong, so the new style, whatever it is, remains, at least for a while.
Clearly you do all this because you can. But you will stand or fall by your content. The message I am getting is that there are going to be less journalists and that they will be more remote from the City centre. And I haven't heard anything about how you are going to obtain news, only about how you will present it. Is there also going to be a redesign of your news-gathering activities? if so - who will blog about it?
Finally I was intrigued to learn that you have been taught how to upload photos from your mobile. Photos of what? The view from Fort Dunlop? A PR bash? Or will the Executive Editor be out on the street, looking for news?
Clifford, I am warming to you. However, it's "fewer" journalists, not less! Remember, journalists are (ac)countable.
U
It looks very bright and breezy, yes, even classy, BUT , so what ?
Newspapers are dying , regional newspapers are dying fast.
The Post is losing advertisers , and readers.
Can we expect an increase in content , ie pagination , now that The Post is relaunching in a new, smaller size ?
I don't agree with Bootless and Dizzy-Eyed (great name, what's the story?). I don't know what your passion is BADE, but mine is newspapers. I don't work in them for the hell of it, I believe in them and want to make sure they are looked after and thrive.
Newspapers are struggling because advertisers and readers think they can get their 'fix' somewhere else. So my job, alongside designing the things day in and day out, is to make sure we keep those people on board, by being modern and forward thinking newspapers in terms of design and content and by having a huge presence in the place they are moving to: the web.
The Post has the best chance for years to make that leap forward.
If you measure your new compact Post and decide there is 13cm less news than before then I don't care. I only care if you think that 13cm has led to us giving you a worse coverage than before. It won't, of course, because that doesn't make any sense to any journalist here. Keep reading us and please keep talking to us, you will believe...
Since you asked :) I'm not mad about the headline font, I think it looks a bit squashed and old fashioned. A serif font is a nice way to make the paper look business-like, but there might be a fresher, "more confident" one out there.
Otherwise, I like.
Interesting you should say that, Clare. I have just had delivered two more fonts to try as headline fonts. I'll be doing some test pages with Centennial and Minion later today. I'll try to put them up as pix to let you see how it's looking.
Thank you for the compliment regarding my unassuming moniker, I suppose it's too much to expect newspaper executives to read Shakespeare, involved , as they are ,in the infectious, heady whirl of newspaper re-design.
I don't intend to bury your obvious passion and enthusiasm under a coruscating cascade of cynicism but you respond exactly as you would expect a fully subscribed member of the Trinity Mirror digital revolution.
Yes , Trinity Mirror is taking the brands on-line , hurrah!
Remind me again when the dot.com boom took place ? Ten years ago ?
Some thing very much like that , it's too little ,and it's too late.
I wish you every success with your endeavours , the fact remains that you are haemorrhaging readers , and advertisers , and you will continue to lose readers , as your ageing readership declines.
A few (beautifully thought-out) fonts won't make any difference.
Bootless - what a intellectual snob you are.
I would say you are a canker blossom for trying to kill Mike's enthusiasm, only I know you'd feel smug for getting the reference.
Newspapers may be seeing a declining revenue, but they are making far more money than any online operations do. I wonder how much the Post website makes?
I think you're right that newspapers messed up the dot com boom. Is it too late? It will be if they don't use what print readership they have left to fund a very rapid online development.
Good luck to Mike and the team I say. They have a big job on their hands. If they think a print redesign might help then, well so be it. I stopped buying local newspapers a long time ago.
Emma - You accuse me of intellectual snobbery, and yet you write under the eponymous nomenclature of the heroine of an Austen novel.
Some mishtake surely.
Your spiky daubings also cite me for trying to " kill" the enthusiasm of Mike and his team,au contraire, I have absolutely no pretensions that anything we write in this little backwater of cyberspace will make any difference whatsoever to the eventual outcome of Trinity Mirror's attempt to wring every last penny from their failing regional print operation.
As you say , advertising revenues are " pounds in the paper and pennies on the web" - but the overheads are so very much greater for newspaper production than web production.
Newspapers are in a terminal decline , and not just in Birmingham .
May I politely suggest , without the need for sub-Shakesperean insults , that you take a look here :
http://graphicdesignr.net/papercuts/
Toodle Pip!
Bootless and Dizzy Eyed, I have fallen in love with you and the subtleties of your prose.
Forsooth, under your spell,
U