Our starting point will be the news on 25th of October. On this day we need to buy a selection of newspapers to look through. From these we need to pick a story that interests us to research thoroughly. We need to analyse the tone of voice, typography, composition, layout, grids and anything else we feel is relevant.
We need to look at other places where the story is mentioned such as local news, national, international, twitter, online news and on tv. After researching this we will need to put together a presentation showing what we found, preferably in a way that links to our subject if possible. The deadline is Friday the 31st of October.
An introduction to editorial design
To understand the effect the littlest changes can make in editorial design we looked at the rebranding of The Independent newspaper in November 2013.
The image above shows an example of the old branding for the Independent. The title seems really condensed with really tight kerning making it seem really crammed together with no white space balancing it out, also there are photos and a sign saying the price over it. The whole mast head is really messy and tight. The bold sans serif font in the bright red really shouts for your attention and isn't subtle in its approach, good for capturing attention but not great for showing class and style. The large amount of different images is quite confusing and the large subtitles are limited to one or two words per line which makes it less legible. The column sizes are not very uniform which also looks quite messy for a front cover. Even the subject on the front of a monkey is quite informal and wouldn't attract a high class audience which is what they wanted to change in the rebrand.
The image above shows the rebranded paper. The aims of the redesign were to make it look gorgeous and radical like when the paper was first launched in 1986 as they thought it was something that had been lost. They wanted it to show the bold, sophisticated and forthright tone of the paper. The logotype has gone from very tight and crushed to being a sans serif font with very high contrast in weight my initial thoughts were how similar it looks to Bodoni which is an incredibly classy font in my eyes as its used for lots of high fashion brands. They've placed the mast at the left side of the page with the text running vertically so nothing interferes with it like in the previous look and it runs smoothly with the layout. There is just one large photo on the page now so you are much less confused. The subtitle is also now much more clear as it only spans two lines. The columns have been made much shorter and uniform in width for an elegant symmetry this is much more attractive and legible. Matt Willey was the designer on the project, he won 2014 creative review designer of the year. The design includes a 12 column grid system which isn't so clear in this example as the columns each span two but the reason for this is so the grid is really versatile and allows room for things to breathe.
The type designer for the project was Henrik Kubel he created a whole new font family just for the papers rebrand. The new typefaces were made to give the paper a whole new identity that was individual to it. There were 14 fonts in total each based on the same framework so they worked well together but different in look and style. There was even an all number font.
Overall I think the rebrand of the paper was really successful in looking more classy. I think the serif title screams sophistication and the minimal grid system and colour choices create an effective and attractive feeling. The tone of voice has gone from quite informal and attention seeking to sleek and high class for the type of person who really wants to go deep into an article.
Matt Willey
Matt has done a lot of successful editorial designs for names such as Elephant magazine, Port and YCN.
Above is an example of a double page spread he designed for YCN magazine. You can tell he is a lover of minimal design as this is really simple giving all the blocks of information a load of space to breathe. Its super simplistic and really effective.
Above is another example of his work this time for Elephant magazine. Once again its really simple with the image going across more than one page and cutting off giving a small amount of space for text. Despite the lack of text the page is really interesting. The larger letters LA stand out massively they're shouting at you but in a composed and stylish way.
Above you can see exactly the same headline story being published by both The Sun and The Independent. As you can see their approaches are both very different. The Suns approach is so over dramatic and over the top with its ridiculously large heading even larger than the papers title screaming the news heading at you. It refers to the man killed as brit no2 rather than even calling him a name he is just a number, they also use the nickname Jihadi John both of which I feel in insensitive and disrespectful the the dead. The huge title takes up most of the room so the photo is crammed behind and there is a tiny white text box outlines in black as if its an automatic word function has been placed over the image. This textbox has long sentences making it not very legible. You can also see an image of a posing Cheryl Cole above it, this completely takes the seriousness of the article away and makes it seem like a cheap joke.
On the other hand the Independants approach is much more impressive. They show simple white text on a black background reading a respectful passage about the fallen. The centrally aligned text makes it look alike a passage on a gravestone. Its a really nice way to show respect towards the man and is impressively simple. The main criticism I have of this is how the last line reads 'here is the news, not the propaganda' but they have felt the need to add their logo onto the top which contradicts this making it propaganda for themselves. Despite this its still much preferred to the suns approach.
The reason behind the huge difference in approach is the target audience. The Sun is targeted at people wanting a quick read to catch up with the latest gossip and news without having to go into much detail. The Independant on the other hand is thought of as slightly more upper class and for people wanting to know more facts and information going deeper into each article. For people who like to take some time out of a busy day and really catch up with recent affairs.
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