Sound off on Republic’s new look
In case you missed it, The Arizona Republic unveiled a redesign this morning complete with a full-page “Welcome to the Republic’s Fresh New Look” guide. In a front page brief, editor Randy Lovely explained the changes.
“For more than a year and with feedback from more than 10,000 of you, The Arizona Republic has worked to identify changes and additions to the newspaper that would make it easier to read and more helpful and informative.”
I think I have to agree with AZCentral reader “William1777″ who at 1:34 a.m. today chimed in with this gem: “You can put lipstick on a pig….”
Seriously, at first glance it doesn’t look like they did much given they spent a year researching and thinking about it. On the front page they moved what was “Today’s Quick Read” to the bottom along with the index and weather. It also appears that there’s a crapload more white space on all four margins. They’ve also added some new features they plan to roll out this week, such as new puzzles going from once per week to six, a new national college football page in the Sunday sports section, and a redesigned “Calendar” pull out on Thursday’s they say will be “the authoritative guide to things to do.”
They also changed the agate type font and increased its size. The new typeface is called “Retina” and it’s designed to be easier to read. Now old people can see more clearly as they lose their savings in the stock market! In fact, to me it looks like the whole newspaper was redesigned with senior citizens in mind (the Republic’s main demographic anyway). A bigger font also means less copy to write and since they have such a skeleton staff nowadays I guess that’ll save them money too. Dang I’m jaded, but that’s how I see it.
How do you see it? What’s your opinion of the new design?
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Comments
September 29th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
All that white space foreshadows the real page size when they use up the existing stock of newsprint. And there you have the real reason — cost cutting by making the page size smaller. Guess I should have interrupted breakfast for a quick blog — I made the lipstick on a pig comment about the new look around 6 a.m. today at the breakfast table!
September 30th, 2008 at 9:48 am
The extra wide margins bothered me, and it looked like a mistake at first.
My bigger problem is with AZCentral.com frequently requiring a login, and delivering bad search results
September 30th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Len, I swear I didn’t read your blog first. It looks like we were drinking from the same cup of coffee. http://www.hmatime.com
September 30th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Interestingly, one Azcentral blogger commenting on Republic’s Saban article stated that Republic was pushing him over Arpio and “I will never spend a dime on your paper again.”
My reason is time management. It is much easier to catch newspapers online. I can read Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, Billboard magazine and AZcentral in the amount of time I used to read one newspaper.
Retina is a nice sans-serif typeface. Patent holder is Hoefler & Frere-Jones (New York, New York).
To think, I spent a whole year in journalism school studying typeface and newspaper design. Today it’s all pagination.
Don’t think I’ve held an actual “newspaper” (other than Business Journal) in my hand in years.
Didn’t they go out with CD and 8-track tapes?
So why are people still buying newspapers? There can’t be that many bird cages in the U.S. (Lou Grant – the best industry show ever.)
October 1st, 2008 at 9:04 am
I read azcentral during the week, but love my hard copy on the weekends. I realize the newspaper biz is changing and The Republic is making concessions to that, but there’s no excuse for bad writing, pathetic proofreading (online and hard copy editions) and laying off talented staff.
October 1st, 2008 at 4:17 pm
I’m/was a second-generation newspaper reporter, so the ink flows through my veins. And as long as newspapers still publish hard copies, I will gladly hold and read them.
Yes, unfortunately, their quality and prestige have diminished but reading my computer screen seems so impersonal and static – it offers no tactile, emotional connection.
Valley PR Blog » Blog Archive » Does size matter? Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 8:38 am
[...] little over a month ago we reported on the Republic’s redesign. I didn’t notice it was smaller then, if it was. One thing that is consistent with the [...]