I have been doing quite a lot of thinking lately (which is good — I sure haven’t been posting) and reading about good newspaper design on the web.
I am convinced that newspaper home pages are much too busy. Trying to do much too much and be everything for everybody. So what you end up with is a mishmash of links, content and ads. The worst ads are those that expand into the viewable area, either hiding content or pushing it away, creating the links-as-moving-targets moment. But that’s for another post.
One way I have come to like is the use of links to related stories as subheads, as in this story from CNN. The links are camouflaged as subheds, providing the benefit of breaking up the text while also providing doorways to other stories. The deeper you go in the story, the deeper into background you should go because the people who read an entire story are certainly more interested in the subject matter than those who quit after a couple of grafs.
I like the idea. Now back to the thinking board…
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