Charles Apple

In general, the reaction to Fort Lauderdale’s new design — which we showed you earlier this week — has been positive. This, despite the fact that the design is quite a bit more radical and different than the redesign of its sister paper, the Orlando Sentinel, which launched in June.

Again, the new SunSentinel hits the streets Sunday morning. Design director Paul Wallen has been kind enough to answer our questions and walk us through what the folks in Fort Lauderdale have been up to this summer.

Q. In, say, 100 words or less, what is the overall design philosophy you’re trying to achieve with this project?

A. We are trying to create a “super” brand that extends across all our platforms, including the web and TV. We want it to feel bold and new — we don’t want the SunSentinel to seem like your father’s newspaper. We want to help readers find what they want faster. We want the paper to feel less like homework and be easier to read. We live in a vibrant community, we want the newspaper to reflect that in content and presentation. We want more surprises. Headlines that read the way we talk. We want to be smarter, funnier, more relevant to a younger audience. We want to take chances and worry more about the people who will “get it” than the few who won’t.

Before we get to the rest of our questions, let’s dive directly into the new design, shall we?

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PAGE ONE

Paul writes:

Our premise is that many readers are starved for time. That they have a lot competing for their attention. And traditional newspapers may not seem relevant to as many people as they used to.

So we’re trying to turn up the volume without turning up the noise. We hit every item on the front hard with some kind of visual element.

The front page becomes an entry point in the rest of the newspaper and helps you find what you’re most interested in. Speed is of the essence. Time-starved readers want to sift through the content choices quickly and easily.

The headlines at the very top of the front page provide immediacy, flexibility and a strong above-the-fold voice for important stories that may not have visual elements. This treatment was inspired by RSS readers (web feed aggregators). But this area could also be expanded to sell one big story.

Each day we’ll feature a single, dominant story with strong visuals aimed at our target demographic below the headlines. I’ve been calling this “the splash.” The definition of “hard” or “soft” is no longer relevant for choosing the splash story. It just needs to be something that’s high interest and one of the best things in the paper.

In many cases, the splash story will jump from the front page. Sometimes it will be a container or an alternative story form.

At the bottom, our former digest now becomes a highly focused best bets in the paper. The amount of text is carefully measured to serve as both a refer and stand alone content. Each item has a visual item to make sure it is seen and hopefully read.

PAGE 2A: BEST OF TODAY

This page continues the reader experience from the front page, emphasizing navigation. Part of the page will highlight content from other sections. Again, enough text is provided to give the reader a global view of the story and a visual cue (page view) of where to find it.

Local news is emphasized with a collection of briefs mapped out by location and color-coded topics. The idea is that if you’re only going to spend 10 minutes with the paper, you can go through the first two pages and get a pretty good overview of the day’s news. And hopefully one or two of these nuggets will hook fast-track readers into spending a little more time with the rest of the paper.

Traditional readers who want more depth can still find everything inside the paper, plus an easier menu of how to get there.

PAGE 3A: NATION AND WORLD

The third page of the A section is a gateway into the national and world report. We’re introducing some more short form storytelling here and giving readers a mix of briefs and something more in depth. The emphasis for this page will shift more toward analysis and looking ahead rather than strictly reporting yesterday’s news.

PEOPLE PAGE

We’re expanding the People page and giving it more space. It used to be a half page, now it has a strip ad at the bottom.

Here’s an example of where formatting can help us a lot. We’ve dramatically cut down the amount of time needed to produce this page by coming up with a very pliable format. The content is edited with the format in mind. With a little bit of skill applied to the main photo edit and typography, the rest comes together very quickly. And it looks good.

OPINION

Even our Opinion pages get revamped. Here we’re just trying to increase the pacing and make the pages a little more active.

CROSS-PLATFORM BRANDING

We didn’t just wake up one day and decide to put a big Superman-like “S” on the front page. It originates with the desire to create a “super” brand that extends across all platforms.

When you see the entire newspaper together, and not just the front page, you begin to see how the branding system extends throughout the product and brings everything together.

But beyond that, it’s also part part of a larger branding strategy to tie together all our print, web and TV products. The “S” will also tie into branding for SunSentinel.com and WSFL TV station.

Compared to a traditional newspaper nameplate, it also offers many more branding opportunities. Imagine that red S as an icon on your iPhone. Or on the side of a newspaper box.

LOCAL COVER

Here you can start to see the architecture and branding from the front page carried through.

On daily news section fronts like this, we find that we always have a “newsy” story that’s not very visual. It’s usually the story editors want to lead with.

With the redesign, we’ll give these stories emphasis with a reversed headline, breakout information and a non-modular structure. This allows us to have a strong headline treatment at the top without the big rectangle block of type pushing everything else down like it would with a strip story.

Besides, some folks out there may recall that I’m a longtime fan of the “dogleg lead!”

No more than three traditional story jumps from these section fronts in the redesign. The rest will be container items that provide an overview and then send readers inside, online, etc.

LOCAL PAGE 2

Here we have a rotating series of short form features such as Sun Sentinel Watch. Two days a week we’ll do a “Best of the blogs.” And some utility information in the bulletin board.

LOCAL PAGE 3: SOUTH FLORIDA

More local news! Continued emphasis on navigation, short form and layering.

SPORTS COVERS AND INSIDE PAGES

We think this redesign is going to really showcase our sports content. We’ve already been using it with Olympics pages. Tim Ball has been doing a great job with those and the response has been very positive.

Sports is a great place to showcase our personalities and unique analysis, and we’ve tried to find ways in the redesign to call even more attention to them.

Once again, fewer jumps, more emphasis on containers and other story forms.

Throughout the section, there’s a real emphasis on layering and finding ways to present information in the form that’s easiest to read.

YOUR MONEY

There’s a real emphasis on consumer news and even some entertainment in this section now.

We try to take advantage of all the numbers and display them in a way to help bring readers into the stories.

The daily pages, which are a little newsier, get the same section front treatment as local with the lead story. Sunday and Monday sections are a little more magazine-like in the content, and the presentation reflects that.

Inside pages like Your Tech reflect some of the same formatting from the rest of the paper, but allow and open canvas area for strong display of a very visual story.

OUTLOOK

Our Sunday Outlook section will continue to be a showcase for some of our more in-depth reporting, writing, photography and infographics.
Even in the era of smaller pages and reduced news hole, this gives us a chance to dig into something in a big way every week.

FIT

This is a new section that we’re only a few weeks into. It’s once a week and is all about health and fitness. So far readers and advertisers seem to love it.

Features designer Angie Brennan gets major credit here, both for executing it so well. But back when the idea for the section was on life support during space cuts, and everyone else was ready to let it go, she kept it alive through the sheer force of her will.

This is another place our emphasis on navigation, story forms and readability will showcase the content in a terrific way.

LIFESTYLE

This section was already a model for a lot of the short form and magazine style content that we’re trying to bring to other parts of the paper. So a lot of this was just bringing in our new format, type faces and colors, which make it more vibrant.

HOME

All the feature section fronts have strong promotional pieces at the top to help showcase content that’s inside the section and aid navigation. Again, an emphasis on containers and small pieces to balance out the longer stories.

Inside pages do a better job of emphasizing segmented stories that we had before, but were presented in dense blocks. Have I mentioned how much I love our new type?

SHOWTIME

Nuri Ducassi no sooner set foot in the newsroom before she was coming up with a fresh new look for Showtime, our entertainment tab and one of our most popular sections.

TYPOGRAPHY

We’re retaining Imperial for body text, though we’ve made some adjustments to help improve legibility. And we still have Vectora for agate and listings.

Otherwise it’s all new type. Thanks to the research and hard work of News Design Director Chris Mihal, we now have a type palette that is fresh and infinitely more flexible and adaptable.

The new design features Expresso and Flama for headlines and other display. And we’re introducing Morgan for navigation and other specialty uses.

COLOR PALETTE

The fun part was that we put the colors up on a wall in the newsroom, and let everyone suggest names. Then everyone voted for their favorites.

So we now have official colors in our palette and documented in our style guide with names such as Miller Light, Barry Manilow Blue and Smuckers.

ATTITUDE

We’re going to be more surprising and less predictable. We want to take more intelligent risks and not dumb it down. We’re going to worry more about the people who will get it than the few who won’t.

We’re going to value above all else the potential for something to capture a reader’s imagination, inspire them or entertain them.

Headlines will be more conversational and personal. We want to write headlines the way people actually talk.

As I wrote in our style manual: “This design was born to have fun with words. Don’t let it down.”

And that’s the new SunSentinel, courtesy of Paul Wallen.

Any questions? We thought so, too. And Paul took the time to answer them:

Q. How much of the change was driven by forces within the Sun-Sentinel and how much was driven by Tribune corporate? In other words: Is there a new Tribune-company house style that will filter down to all the papers?

A. We’ve had great freedom here at the SunSentinel to decide exactly what will work in our market. I’m not aware of any Tribune-company house style. South Florida is a unique place, so something that might work great in Chicago, Hartford or Baltimore probably wouldn’t reflect this community very well. I hope they continue to let each property to what’s right in their location for their readers.

Q. How long has this redesign been in progress? Since Sam Zell directed all the Tribune papers to redesign? Or did you have something in the works before?

A. The paper has been going through an “evolutionary” redesign that predated my arrival and started with Tim Frank. The idea was to keep evolving and keep changing in small increments without unsettling anyone. And over the course of more than two years, the paper did change a lot. Readers really reacted positively to most of these changes.

The next phase of that evolutionary redesign was to be the new display type. That part has been in the works for a long time. News Design Director Chris Mihal researched and chose these typefaces nearly two years ago, before I even arrived at the SunSentinel. When I saw what he was working on, I was very excited. So that part as due to launch anyway, and plans had been made to share the type palette we had developed with the Orlando Sentinel.

But it was becoming increasingly clear that incremental change wasn’t really going to be enough to connect with the younger and occasional readers that we were trying to reach. So we put aside the incremental strategy and were asked to just do a complete redesign. At that point, reexamined everything and rebuilt the paper from the ground up.

So I guess the answer is that there are pieces of this redesign, like the new type and the color palette, that have been in the works for a while. But most of it has been done just over the summer.

Left: Orlando’s debut front. Right:
a prototype Fort Lauderdale front.
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Q. Some features feel a little like the Orlando Sentinel redesign — the use of black reverse boxes, the color palette. Is this intentional or coincidence?

A. This is a bit of a surprise, just because what we’re doing feels very different to me from Orlando. But like I said earlier, I’ll have to let other people judge that because I’ve been immersed in ours for so long.

I think Orlando’s redesign is unique. But it was impossible for us to be influenced by it because of the sequence of events. Most people probably don’t realize that even though Orlando launched earlier, the Tribune redesign initiative actually started in Fort Lauderdale.

Here’s a little background:

Tribune’s Chief Innovations Officer, Lee Abrams, came to Fort Lauderdale for a visit in the spring and that was the beginning of the redesign initiative. He had some ideas that we tried, and we also prototyped some of our own ideas. We spent a week or so after that doing more prototypes, then Lee came back for another meeting. Orlando’s Bonita Burton came down to join us, and we had a lot of early prototypes to display.

Orlando was just getting started on some ideas of their own. Bonita really added a lot to the conversation. But even then it was clear she was taking Orlando in a different direction.

I doubt that Orlando was influenced by work Bonita saw at that session, because she really seemed to have her own vision. And like I said, they don’t seem that similar to me.

We have been very open about our redesign work, making our very first prototypes available for all the Tribune newspapers to see. We even created a website with our first prototypes and opened it up to folks at all the other properties. And as I mentioned earlier, we shared our new type development with Orlando long ago. We also sent them our color palette, another piece that was part of our evolutionary redesign. That was finished and implemented in the newspaper long before Lee’s visit and the redesign initiative.

Q. Did you pick up any ideas from the Orlando launch? How about things NOT to do? Like what, for instance?

A. That might have been a good idea. But we’ve had such a huge amount of work to fit into such a small window, we’ve had to stay incredibly focused on the work at hand the whole time in order to make our deadline. Even now, we’re scrambling to finish templates, do some training and put together as much of a style guide as possible. So we really didn’t have a chance to compare notes with Orlando’s launch. But if anyone there has any last minute tips, I’m all ears!

Q. You’ll recall our favorite news design consultant-and-curmudgeon, Alan Jacobson, thrashed Orlando’s redesign for not being innovative enough. What did you think? Did he have a point, or was he being too hard on Bonita and company?

A. I’m sure that the Orlando folks are trying to do what’s right for their market and their readers, as are we. I know they got an awful lot done in a very short period of time. It seems like there were also a lot of positive comments and I remember reading a particularly flattering piece on Mario Garcia’s blog about it.

Q. Do you think the Sun-Sentinel redesign is innovative?

A. “Innovative” is such a subjective word. I can tell you what we’re trying to accomplish, and I’ll leave it to others to decide if it’s innovative or not.

We’re trying to reach out to a very specific audience, the people who don’t read us often enough now. Readers in the 30-49 age group, time-starved readers, occasional readers. These people tell us they don’t have enough time to read the paper, that they have trouble finding the content they’re interested in and don’t want to work so hard to find it. So we really focused on things like navigation, readability and opening up the spacing for more of an “easy to read” feeling. The thought is that if we can get these people to read us just once or twice a week more than they do now, that would add up to a big impact.

Visually, we wanted to reflect the community — bold, vibrant, colorful, unique.

Every single piece of the newspaper has been touched by this redesign. We brought about as much change as we possibly could within a three month window.

Even though we’ve put an incredible amount of time and energy into making it to the launch, this is really just the beginning.

We already have ideas in the works that weren’t ready for the launch, but will be phased in during the months ahead. And as soon as we’re up and running with this redesign, the first thing on the agenda will be to go back and figure out how we can keep improving it.

Q. It’s a radically different look — that’s for sure. My first reaction was: ‘My God…’ But what will readers think? Are you changing so much that they’ll recoil in horror?

A. Yes, in fact I have already booked my flight out of the country for August 18th.

Just kidding. I hope they don’t recoil in horror, Charles!

Look, we understand that some people don’t like change. And there is a certain segment of any audience, including ours, made up of traditional readers. They might have been fine with, or even preferred, for us to just keep doing things the same old way.

But by almost any measure you use — circulation, readership, focus groups, whatever — what we’re doing now is not working for enough people. To me, the scariest thing of all is to not changing because there’s no doubt that’s a road to failure.

If I had a guaranteed formula for success, I’d be sharing it with everyone else. Well, OK, maybe selling it to everyone else. Ha, ha.

But this redesign reflects what we think will connect with the target audience in our market. We think the vast majority of traditional readers will stick with us. And in the past, we’ve found traditional readers to be much more tolerant of change than we tend to expect.

We’ve tried to change a lot, but we have avoided change for the sake of change. Every decision has been made with readers in mind, in an effort to make the paper easier and more fun to read. If we’ve done our job well enough and kept our focus on the reader experience, I’d like to think the recoiling in horror should be kept to a minimum.

Q. Most of the negative comments here in the blog have been about spelling and grammar in the dummy headlines, as opposed to the design itself or on how you’re changing the way you’re presenting the content. Is this a disappointment to you? Or a relief?

A. The points about spelling and grammar are valid; I’m certainly not going to argue that we should have typos and poor grammar! At the same time, I have to deal with the reality of a very demanding deadline, which forces us to prioritize.

These pages are prototypes, not something we are publishing in the newspaper. And the definition of a prototype (I looked it up!) is a rudimentary working model of a product. I doubt that Apple was worrying about syntax and grammar when prototyping the first iPhone.

Not that I compare what we’re doing to the iPhone in any way. I’m just saying that to me, prototypes are about ideas. It would be nice for them to be perfectly edited if time allowed, but that’s secondary to developing the ideas and making sure it’ll work when it comes time to do the real thing. That’s when we’ll be sure to apply our highest copy editing standards.

Q. Harrison Goodman’s comment on our previous post:

…If Tribune keeps on laying off bodies left and right, there’s going to be nobody left to put together design-intensive pages like this.

…is a damn good one. Like everyone else, you guys have been struck by layoffs. How can you get labor-intensive pages like these out of your shop each night and keep up the quality with reduced staffing?

A. That’s a good question, and we had no idea the layoffs were coming when we began the project. But these may be less labor intensive than they seem.

Even before the layoffs, we were putting a lot of effort into streamlining the workflow. We’ve built a lot of things into the redesign that will actually save time.

For example, we are taking a much more formatted approach. Where possible, content is even being written and edited to fit the format. The format doesn’t drive the content, but keeping the format in mind saves time at every stage in the process. Editors are embracing this because it saves them time as well. It’s really just about thinking ahead to the physical form of the paper from the very beginning.

This has also allowed us to do a lot more templating of pages. So where it used to take a designer a certain about of time to “draw the boxes” and come up with a page configuration, they will much more often be able to apply a template so that a lot of the basic, less creative work is already done.

And I want to emphasize, we’re not stripping away the creativity. It’s actually the opposite, we’re just trying to free up more time for the designer to focus on being creative with the important stuff — visual storytelling, typography, editing, etc. The parts we’re formatting are more of what I’d call pagination functions.

And we’re approaching the format the same way a good magazine would. We have a structure that carries through the publication as a foundation. Some parts are more formatted, and some parts have more of an open canvas. But it’s the formatting that ties it all together, and prevents us from having to reinvent the wheel every day.

As long it’s a good format, we feel this approach can be pretty effective.

And hey, I’m sure some days it’ll be better than others. But we’re aiming high!

Q. Most of the feedback here has been overwhelmingly positive, though. Your response?

A. Feedback is really valuable, even when it’s not positive. Really, I was most pleased at the amount of interest and the number of responses. The fact that people are reacting tells me they don’t think it looks just like everything else out there. So regardless of whether the comments are positive or negative, I really appreciate all the thoughtful responses.

Q. A lot of the pages feature beautiful use of white space — or color tint boxes — and large photos. Very easy on the eye, but it can lead to criticism that you’re not giving readers as much news as you did before, with a traditional format. How do you respond to that?

A. I also personally reject the idea that a newspaper has to be dense and boring in order to deliver the news. The SunSentinel has lots of great content, we don’t apologize for making it easier for readers to enjoy it or for presenting it in a visually sophisticated way.

Content is more important than ever. There’s nothing about this redesign that squeezes out news. I’m sure a few people will say that because we’re trying some different approaches in how we deliver that news. I expect criticism because we’re trying to do something different. Frankly, if we don’t get criticism, that will tell me we didn’t change enough.

But we’re really just trying to do a better job giving readers what they tell us they want.

How long have studies shown that readers don’t like jumps and often don’t follow them? Why haven’t we tried harder to address that as an industry? We’re trying to do something about that.

Readers keep telling us they don’t have time for the paper. Shouldn’t we do something to make it feel a little faster and easier to use?

Time after time, focus groups tell us they weren’t even aware of something in the paper that they would have been very interested in. Should we ignore that and keep building dense pages so that we can feel good about cramming in as much as possible?

We’re not throwing out any content, but we’re trying to present it in a way that improves the reader experience. We want to tell stories in the form that makes the most sense for the reader. In some cases, that may mean tighter writing and editing. It may mean giving readers a more global summary of a story on a section front instead of a narrative that jumps. I think those are all good things and we’re not doing it just to throw some eye candy on the page.

Q. The prototype pages are striking in their use of cutouts, unusual crops and other magazine-type design techniques that most papers shy away from. How does your photo department feel about this? Or, more to the point: How did you push this through?

A. I’ll tell you that my absolute favorite thing about working at the SunSentinel is being surrounded by so much talent in all departments. We have one of the best photo staffs in the country and I don’t feel like we had to push anything through. We work hand in hand with photo editors and photographers every day, and give great display to photography. Nothing about the redesign will change that. Director of Photography Taimy Alvarez has been a terrific partner in trying to innovate, as have many other photo editors and photographers. And anyone who knows Taimy knows that she isn’t shy, she will speak up in a hurry if she thinks we aren’t doing right by photography!

Q. The Sun-Sentinel is famous for its graphics department, which has blazed a multimedia trail for the rest of us. How will that department factor into the new print format? Will you be using graphics differently in the redesign?

A. You’re right, our graphics department is amazing. Truly. It’s quite an experience to be here and see them work first hand. I’ll just say this: We would be freakin’ idiots to create a redesign that didn’t take full advantage of the work our graphics staff does. Really, we already try to do that to every extent possible, so I don’t see much changing there. We still want to choose the tools — words, graphics, photos, illustrations — that best tell the story and connect with the reader. And we still have to execute. Redesigning doesn’t change any of that.

Q. Why Aug. 17? As opposed to Aug. 10 or sometime in September?

A. We started out with September 1 as the launch day because that was the three-month window from our first discussion. The concept was just to change as much as we could in that amount time, rather than wait for six or nine months in order to have a more comprehensive roll out. With new ownership, there has been a real emphasis on identifying good ideas and just doing them right away. Which I kind of like.

The date got moved up a couple times for various reasons and we just ended up at Aug. 17. The compressed timeline made it a real challenge, partly because we took a very ambitious approach. But I’m also really pleased with what we got done in the time we had, and anxious to keep building on it.

Q. What’s the deal with the hyphen? It’s just “SunSentinel” now? Are you still “South Florida”? Or will that be “SouthFlorida“?

A. We just didn’t want to be quite so formal.

We’re now the Sun Sentinel. But you can still get to our website and send us e-mail with the hyphen, if you prefer.

Q. So… did you screw with the crossword puzzle?

A. No. Definitely not.

Q. This redesign wasn’t just a Tim Frank + Paul Wallen production. What can you tell me about the team that put all this together?

A. OK, I’m glad you asked this question so I didn’t have to force it into another answer! Because there are a couple things I’d really like people to know.

One is that my absolute favorite thing about this redesign, above the end result even, has been the collaboration. I truly have never seen a redesign or a project of this magnitude have such a collaborative approach. We have a creative, gifted, hard working group that has made a pretty daunting task a real pleasure to be a part of. The highlight for me was the times after hours or on weekends when the whole team huddled in the conference room and just brainstormed our way through the redesign and solved the tricky spots as a group. Every single person on our team can look at the end result and see their influence woven through it. We’ve riffed off each other’s ideas so much that it’s hard to even remember who had the original idea in the first place. We also made a point of showing very early prototypes to the entire staff, letting them critique the work and help guide our direction.

I’d really like to run down the redesign team quickly if that’s OK.

Tim Frank
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You mentioned Tim Frank, DME for Visuals, one of the most creative people I’ve ever worked with. He always there to help us solve a particularly sticky problem or elevate something that was almost there but needed some finessing. He routinely took the things that nobody else could figure out and found a solution. Hardest working man in the newspaper business.

News Design Director Chris Mihal, who I mentioned earlier, was the creative force behind the new type, as well as a lot of the redesign architecture. He’s a prototyping machine. He’s a lot more creative than your average machine. And machines can’t grow mustaches. But anyway, an awful lot of this redesign began with Chris’ vision.

Business Design Director Rebekah Monson has been our rock. She not only contributed many creative ideas and did some terrific prototyping work, she also had the responsibility of translating everything into CCI. Anyone who’s familiar with CCI knows what an incredible amount of work that is. She’s put in long, long hours locked away building shapes and templates, going back through and fixing problems, just whatever was needed. We never would have made this happen without her.

Nuri Ducassi and Tim Ball
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Sports Design Director Tim Ball and Features Design Director Nuri Ducassi are relatively new additions to our team, but I have been amazed at how quickly the stepped in and started contributing. Their influence runs through the redesign, especially in sports and features.

Features Designer Angie Brennan is the greatest juggler I’ve ever seen. She has kept the features desk afloat by cranking out quality work day after day, week after week. And somehow, at the same time, she prototyped a large chunk of the feature sections and introduced some really inspired ideas. Then she turned around and built a lot of the CCI templates.

News Designers David Anesta and Vanessa Cordo have also done a lot of the thankless work like building column sigs, shapes and templates. The kind of critical stuff nobody really wants to do, but becomes a real problem if it’s not done right. And talk about thankless work, Kathy Laskowski was responsible for all the CCI product setup and a vast list of things that I don’t even understand enough to explain.

Paul Wallen
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My role has mostly been just to keep lists, check things off, keep us on schedule and buy doughnuts. This redesign is above all else a reflection of the people listed above.

Q. What’s the No. 1 piece of advice you’d offer the next Tribune-company newspaper planning to launch a redesign?

A. I don’t think I’d presume to give advice. Every newsroom is going to have its own challenges and it’s own unique community of readers.
How about if I just share a few things I think we did well, and some lessons learned?

I’m proud of how open and collaborative the process has been. We took our earliest prototypes and immediately posted them throughout the newsroom for feedback. The entire design staff has had an opportunity to weigh in from the earliest moments and help shape the direction. We took an inclusive approach in forming the redesign team and everyone had a strong voice in the final outcome. We created a website for everyone in the newsroom — and even people from other papers in Tribune — to see what we were working on and comment on it.

We put a huge emphasis on organizing and documenting everything, and that helped a lot. My big project the last week or so has been putting together a design style guide, which this newsroom has never had. We’re up to about 40 pages already and it’s not even one third of the way done. It’ll be very comprehensive on both the philosophy behind the design and in documenting all the nuts and bolts, system stuff, etc. This came together easier because we worked with the goal in mind from the beginning.

This was a huge task, but we really pushed ourselves to prototype and template nearly everything in the newspaper. While I’m sure that there are things we’ll have to figure out on the fly, I’m hopeful that being so thorough will make our launch smoother. I posted a huge list outside my office with every page and a place to color in when it had been prototyped and when it had been templated in our system. It became a surprisingly pleasurable thing to fill in those bars as we got things done!

Lessons learned?

Well, it’s probably easier to do all this without news hole cuts and layoffs right in the middle of the process!

I really like our new emphasis on doing things quickly. It has been energizing in a lot of ways. I think the down side of trying to do this in less than three months is that the communication and training suffered a bit.

We did the best we could, but it took a lot of work-through weekends and 12 to 14 hour days just to get the actual design and system work done.

If I were going to attempt a redesign this ambitious with such a compressed timeline again, I’d probably “schedule” more designated communication and training sessions at certain points through the process. By setting up the times in advance and telling everyone about it, we might have kind of forced ourselves to do it in little pieces along the way rather than trying to cram a lot of it in at the end.

Oh, and definitely don’t change the crossword puzzle.

Thanks, Paul, for taking the time to fill us in on your project. Best of luck for a successful launch!

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 2:28 am and is filed under Innovative ideas, News design, Newspapers, Redesigns, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.