Archive for February, 2009
Sitting in Tallinn last week with an excellent bunch of art directors and a large pile of papers (all in Estonian), design principles became more abstract. Not understanding the stories served to highlight the visual principles at work. And it reminded everyone just how universal really are the rules of making a good newspaper.
So, with thanks to my fellow judges, here is what emerged from my notes: the seven secrets of news design.
- Layout — including strong story hierarchy, building the page from the centre outwards, building in proper contrast and vibrancy to the page, thinking in spreads, sticking to a grid and using space to led the whole thing breathe
- Pictures — including the use of horizontal and vertical contrast, variety of depth, bold cropping and occasional use of a mild tilt to add interest to an otherwise worthy image.
- Type — including the adherence to a strict hierarchy of weights/sizes and a deliberate contrast between short, shy labels and longer, fuller headlines
- Colour — including restraint in use of half-tones and tints and careful preparation of a systematic and logical palette
- Navigation — including a system of colour coding, labelling and cross-referencing and a strong method of building and differentiating story packages on news pages
- Packages — including a simple set of furniture for building story packages: subsidiary stories, sidebars, pull-quotes, graphics and photos
- Graphics — including a clear distinction between info-graphics (graphs and charts) and illustration (photo-montages and drawing) but with a recognition that both skills are essential to great newspaper design
If these areas were properly managed, we all agreed, the proof of the pudding would be in the reading. The result would be a newspaper that was absolutely user-friendly, consistent and (most important of all) interesting.
February 26th, 2009
One of those flurries of work travel (Estonia, Qatar) on top of recent trips to Africa, has convinced me of a need that we at Shakeup would be keen to supply. Can anyone think of way to publicise it … and possibly to fund it from aid money or development grants so that it could be a free service to publishers?
Working on newspapers in developing countries is inspiring because they are generally delivering a demonstrable benefit to society: spreading information and exposing corruption in places where there’s a massive need and where there are no alternative independent mass communications (broadband, patchy; TV, a government mouthpiece; radio, light entertainment).
Often these papers are founded by courageous individuals (such as Hans Luik in Estonia or Charles ‘Mase’ Onyango-Obbo in Uganda) who subsequently become powers in the land but are not (and never especially wanted to be) expert newspaper publishers. Hostile governments and nervous advertisers add to their financial pressures. Insecurity makes it difficult to retain skills and develop staff. The newspaper suffers. The public are let down.
Like doctors visiting field hospitals where bad practices are needlessly putting patients’ lives at risk, we visit newspapers where rivers of scarce cash are wasted on needless faffing around and where there is next to no idea about how to organise a newsroom, commission, edit and design a good newspaper or market a title to its natural readership.
This hurts. It hurts because newspapers always matter and they matter especially in developing countries. And it would be relatively easy (or at least not impossible) to double some of these papers’ efficiency and double their quality at the same time, creating a better media and a secure independent sector.
So here’s the idea: a publisher’s toolkit, like an IKEA house, with everything you need in one box to run a clever, modern, successful newspaper. We’d give them basic, good design; decent fonts; work-flow management systems; the latest indesign software; newsroom layouts; production plans; marketing rules and a daily editorial schedule. One from a pool of senior editors and publishers would be on hand to help install the toolkit — which could be a complete or partial replacement of an existing operation. And once installed, it would be adapted and individualised of course to fit the special requirements of the title in question.
In my conception, this would be a free service for anyone in a developing country who was running an independent newspaper that was doing its best to tell the truth.
February 24th, 2009
In The Snail – Tallinn’s hidden gem — a fascinating couple of hours with Priit Hobemagi, editor-in-chief of Eesti Ekspress, and Hans Luik, the founder and owner.
They run the “New Yorker” of Estonia…well, not really, but it is weekly, it aims high and it specialises in long pieces of reportage and investigation.
It is not rolling in cash but it is surviving — though some pretty aggressive commercialism being (near enough) Berliner format newsprint wrapped in several glossy pages of (mainly) advertising.
This, in a country of less than 1.5 million people where 400,000 of them are Russian speakers and therefore not in the market for an Estonian weekly, seems remarkable.
Hobemagi and Luik are entirely matter-of-fact about their success. First, they only print content that is original work and exclusive to them. Second, they only print what you cannot get from any other publisher in Estonia: high quality story telling, long-form journalism, eye-witness features and in-depth exposes.
They are dimissive about any information that is freely available anywhere - sports, news, weather etc. “Why bother competing?”. They reckon anyone of influence in Estonia has to read Eesti Ekspress every week, which attracts advertisers.
And they are reviewing their policy of putting the complete edition on the web on the day of publication in favour of delaying it by a couple of days or erecting at least a thin veil around it by asking for full registration details before giving away content for nothing.
The believe they are making something valuable and unique, selling it for a decent price and creating a clear channel for advertisers.
How delightful it was to hear the confidence they had evolved over two decades of publication in such a sensible journalistic model. And how impressive that they are able to publish the sort of journalism in a tiny country that we, in a far larger and richer country, don’t seem to be able to afford.
It slightly made me wonder: are we overstating the media revolution? Do we perhaps have too many excitable visionaries and media eggheads in London for our own good? How many hundreds of media businesses are quietly humming along in the UK, like Eesti Ekspress in Tallinn, and will do for many years to come?
February 21st, 2009
The reporter goes to see a businessman and says: “For five thousand dollars I will do a piece about your business”. The businessman pays up and the reporter writes a piece.
The reporter takes it to the editor who says: “For three thousand dollars I will publish this piece”. The reporter hands him the money.
The editor looks at the piece and contacts the businessman’s main competitor in the market and says: “For seven thousand dollars I can prevent this nice piece about your competitor from being published”. The competitor pays. The article is spiked. The editor returns three thousand dollars to the reporter. The reporter returns five thousand dollars to the original businessman.
End result: the reporter has made nothing. The newspaper has made seven thousand dollars. One businessman is happy. The other has ended up no worse off than he started.
This purely illustrative example was told to me last night in The Snail, a restaurant in Tallinn, by the Estonian Richard Branson, a major media owner throughout eastern Europe.
He lived under the Soviet yolk until Estonia was liberated in 1992; Tallinn is only a day’s journey from St Petersburg and Estonia is still has a 30% Russian population. I do not think that he was joking.
February 21st, 2009
Blogging - and indeed all other activity except breathing - had to stop for a while because a book deadline was pressing and chapters had to be handed in.
It is a fascinating book not in the slightest because I am involved but because it outlines the thoughts of Stephen Green, the chairman of HSBC, one of the few bankers to emerge with a reputation unspoilt by recent events.
Penguin are publishing it in June so I will not give away too much at this stage. But as I emerge from the cell where I work, blinking, back into the light, here is what I have been thinking about.
Six ways to avoid selling your soul:
- Integrity: based on honesty and trust and a real desire to exchange value for value
- Relationships: treat others as ends as well as means
- Ambition: aim to contribute the most, not get the most
- Balance: four areas; family, work, friends and the inner life
- Leadership: treat everyone as a leader
- Direction: What value is what I do? Why am I doing it and not someone else?
And not just one at a time. All six at once.
Meanwhile, looking around me once more, I see that everything has become worse.
Many more have lost their jobs. Print has been declared deader than ever. More titles are teetering on the edge of closure.
And yet…there are some great ideas bubbling through. More soon.
February 12th, 2009
