1. PLANNING. The best design work occurs before the stories are ever turned in. This early stage of the issue is critical for effective design, and it underlines the fact that good design is not a cosmetic add-on or a frill.

Basically, you are just doing what you always have done: deciding how to present your information. Previously, the decision was largely whether you would send a reporter or a photographer to cover an event. Today, however, you need to consider many more choices: maps, information graphics, photographs, alternate story forms, polls, even audio or video for your web site and so on.

Take an afternoon away from your normal duties and see what you can do to enhance the system. What can you do to increase effectively the planning procedures? Is there a form you can use to get people to think about visual presentation early on? Can you create a stylebook/guide for reporters on how to create various ALTs?

This will pay off in better and easier design.

2. STOCK PHOTOS. Small newspapers usually don’t have the ability to be creative with photos. The secret here is to go to free stock photo sites and grab some photos ahead of time. Sure, you can search on deadline, but it makes sense to go ahead and grab some good photos for your library when you get a minute. Take the time to tag them well for searching later.

Then use the art in the paper and in staff blogs. The creative use of photos should not be limited because you don’t have adequate staff.

3. CLIP ART: Another time-saver – given the poor quality of clip art on the web – is to use clip art fonts. These are simply fonts that consist of scalable graphics. You can find all sorts of these by doing a Google search. An example is discussed at: http://tinyurl.com/yaoa2ff. There are a lot of free art and icon sites on the web. Again, get it ahead of time and put it in your library.

Because the art can be used as large as you wish, you have all sorts of options. You can use it as feature art on a special package or as small glyphs in an ALT package. Who needs an artist?

4. IMPROVE YOUR PRESS: Although it seems obvious, your design is only as good as your printing. Muddy photographs and poor color registration can ruin an otherwise good design.

Work with the pressroom folks to improve quality of printing. Check the inking of each unit, check the dot gain, check the color registration. Be sure you are preparing your photos correctly in PhotoShop. Basically, if you are not constantly improving your printing, you are getting worse. It is very easy to just accept the status quo. Bring your pressroom personnel onto the design team and challenge them to improve. Your newspaper will look better if you do.

I was going to list a fifth, non-design design improvement, but I couldn’t decide what to include. What do you think?

Related posts:

1. No. 10: Improving page views
2. No. 3: Making design important
3. No. 6: Get interactive for free

The payoff can be great, however, and in fact, it may be a necessity in today’s business climate. A good redesign project can not only give you a better news product, it can improve your bottom line. So let’s get to the point.

When should I redesign my newspaper? Let’s start with when not to redesign.

1. Don’t redesign just because it has been a certain amount of time since your last design tweak. How long it has been since the last one has no direct bearing on whether you should do one now.

2. Don’t redesign just because a new editor wants to put his or her imprint on the paper. Granted, it is important to give a new newsroom boss pretty free rein, but that still isn’t enough alone to embark on a redesign project.

3. Don’t redesign because you saw something in another newspaper you liked and you want to copy it. Copying a concept may be OK, but another paper’s design should not be jammed onto your content haphazardly.

Now, the Do’s:

1. Do redesign if you feel that your content mix has changed to the point where a better presentation plan would enhance the reader experience and make the paper more efficient to read.

2. Do redesign if your look is becoming out of date and/or to improve your brand. This may seem to some to be the opposite of what I said in No. 1 above, but it’s not. Yes, sometimes the passage of time may make your current presentation less effective, but it’s not the simple time passage, it’s that over time your design has become a little tired and less attractive.

3. Do redesign if a competitor has updated their look to the point that you look bad by comparison. Design is not simply cosmetic. It’s part of your brand, part of who you are. If you are looking a little nerdy and out of date (“can’t you see your tie’s too wide?”–Billy Joel), you may need a design update, but be sure it is tied to a content change and not just a cosmetic makeover.

4. Do redesign to include more reader interaction, user generated content and cross-connections among your print product, your web page, your blogs and your mobile site.

5. Do redesign if your readers deserve/want a better and easier-to-read product than you are giving them now, i.e., if you are making a thoughtful business decision.

Let me know if you would like further help in improving your newspaper design.
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Related posts:

1. Redesign, part 3
2. 4 non-design ways to improve newspaper design
3. Planning a newspaper redesign, Part 1

Sunday (old) and Tuesday (new)

Washington Post redesign

The nameplate is a little larger and cleaner looking with the weather moved from the ear to the folio line. Much better. The headline face is cleaner and more interesting visually. There is also an improved use of deck heads for the scanners. Feature heads are centered and italic. News heads remain flush left.

As I had hoped, the body type got a lot of attention, with a larger x-height and a cleaner cut: the old type looks a bit muddy by comparison. I do think it could use a bit more linespacing. I think it is condensed a bit too much, but it really doesn’t seem as squeezed as the old face. Samples at the redesign guide, linked to below.

The Post folks took the opportunity to move a few features around and do some tweaking on their web site as well. I don’t like their columnist sigs, and those little head shots look like WSJ rip-offs, which is too bad. Originality is a better path, even if the WSJ is doing well and looks good, both of which are true.

All in all, I like what the Post did in what is really a minor redesign. I like the typographic changes and they have made it cleaner and lighter without losing the Post personality. The main downer is the WSJ copying.

Here is their PDF that explains the changes. It is worth looking over if you are interested in newspaper design.

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Inspired? Let me help you touch up your paper. E-mail me for more information.

Related posts:

1. What works, what doesn't, III
2. Newspaper headlines: serif or sans?
3. What works, what doesn't, II

The first step, after deciding the scope of the redesign and whether to use an outside consultant – and what level – is to research and evaluate the present product and the people and system that produce it.

Find out what your readers like and don’t like about your current product and its various delivery methods: print, web, mobile, blogs, social media (such as Facebook or Twitter) and so on. It should be easy to ask for feedback on your web site, make a few phone calls and run a few focus groups.

You can get information on how to do all this yourself on the web, or ask your consultant for advice. There are a number of free online survey sites, such as http://surveymonkey.com and http://surveygizmo.com

Naturally, you should also discuss this as a staff and decide what additions and deletions to the content you think you should make. You shouldn’t simply turn over your content to your readers, who may not even be aware of some of the choices you can offer. Be sure to think outside the box here. Don’t get stuck in old ruts. You have a lot of new choices out there.

This is also a good time to study your competition, especially their web sites, since that is where you will meet television stations, bloggers and freelance sites head-to-head. In a competitive marketplace, you need to be sure you are offering the consumer the best package.

Once the content in the print edition is settled, decide whether you are going to buy into the move to smaller formats (tab, Berliner) and then decide where various elements will go. It is better to anchor sections and content so that readers can easily find what they are looking for each issue. The key is to make it easy for the readers, who don’t want to have to think or search.

We’ll talk about the Design Stylebook in a later post, but this would be a good time to start writing down information that will go into that stylebook.

NEXT: Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your production process. Do you need any new technology to make the changes you envision?

Related posts:

1. Redesign, part 3
2. OMG! UGC?
3. When to redesign