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2.10.07

What makes this page a BFD: Effective presentation, three different ways

 
 
Tearful, story-telling photos dominated several front pages today, including The Washington Post, San Jose Mercury News and Los Angeles Times.

There were also lots of misses today. Both the Sun Herald and West Hawaii Today achieved impact at the expense of text legibility – never a good trade-off. The Virginian-Pilot was schizophrenic: strong above the fold, weak beneath the fold. The Columbus Dispatch went big with an illustration that didn't quite work.

The Omaha World-Herald featured a beautiful color photo. Speaking of color, The Wall Street Journal continues to add more color and bigger images. At this rate, it won't be long before it looks like every other newspaper. Pity.

There were more entries in the Anna Nicole sweepstakes from the Saturday Times and the Philadelphia Daily News. Both were strong, but a day late and a dollar short.

The Poughkeepsie Journal had a strong folo on their January 20 BFD.

Newsday earns today's BFD for presenting three different stories using three different means, each with effectiveness and clarity.

The life-sized ruler emphasized that the Penn Station story was a matter of inches. The Anna Nicole story emphasized image over words, rightfully so. Images, headlines and text were integrated for the tornado survivors story without sacrificing legibility (West Hawaii Today and the Sun Herald should take note.) All three stories had a local, Long Island (a.k.a. LI) angle.


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CLASSIFIED NEWSPAPER DESIGN
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Read Steve Outing's interview with Alan Jacobson and learn why newspaper web sites are seriously flawed. Then see alternatives.
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EDITORIAL, CLASSIFIED & ONLINE NEWSPAPER DESIGN
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Our redesigns are catalysts for positive change. Visit the gallery to see how we've transformed publications and websites.
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Bakersfield Californian
RepublicanAmerican
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NEWSPAPER DESIGN WHITEPAPER
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A redesign is a waste of time and money if it doesn't deliver a return on investment. Download our report to learn how to make your redesign pay off, then see how four newspapers boosted readership and revenue by following our advice.
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TARGETED PUBLICATIONS
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INTERACTIVE TOUR
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See in detail how a content-driven redesign did more than make a community daily look better – it made it a better paper.
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RADICAL STRATEGIES FOR CIRCULATION WOES
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A newspaper war, that is. The Sunday Star Times, New Zealand's largest newspaper, faces fierce competition on the newsstand from two tabloids. So it was redesigned to improve its above-the-fold presentation. The complete story will appear here and in the next issue of SND's DESIGN.
 
 






 
The Californian's redesign earned it a spot on Editor & Publisher's list of “Ten That Do it Right.” According to E&P, Bakersfield is appealing to its “really, really conservative market with a really, really radical redesign.”

And it’s working.

Circulation stops are down and revenue is up – over a thousand inches in the redesigned real estate section alone. See before and after, see more pages and read the stories.


 
 






 
The Eureka (CA) Reporter was just a 6,000-circ. weekly in 2004. Our radical yet elegant redesign helped this startup weekly grow to a daily in less than two years. The Reporter goes head-to-head with an established daily owned by Dean Singleton, who told The San Francisco Chronicle last month that his competitor, “does some good design things.” The Society of News Design agrees – they cited this redesign as one of the best in the world. See more pages.

 
 


 
 

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