Redesign alert: Baltimore Sun debuts Sunday
The next Tribune-company redesign to hit the streets: the Baltimore Sun, which debuts Sunday.
Monty Cook, director of content development, sends along a batch of prototype pages for us to check out.The obligatory before-and-after look at page one:
The Sun is touting a number of changes, including keeping the main body text the same size but increasing the leading more than 10 percent. The readers’ guide also plugs:
A clean, four-column layout that provides the look and feel of a news magazine.
Pieces from the Sun’s promotional campaign:
One of my favorite parts of the redesign: What the Sun is calling “Baltimore on the jerseys”:
Our new nameplate adds “Baltimore” to recognize an increased commitment to local news, while an updated vignette recognizes The Baltimore Sun’s 171-year legacy.
Ya gotta love that. A before-and-after look at the nameplate:
—
NEWS
Monty writes:
There are three main sections daily: News, Sports and Features. We’re no longer using section letters to define the sections, only the section names.
The famous Baltimore “Hot L” –added during the 2005 Lucie Lacava redesign — is gone. We’ve mentioned the new nameplate already. And note the addition of a news summary on the left side.
Page 2 will contain weather and a photo feature. Here’s the nation and world page:
A new “Crime and the courts” page features a local reporter who writes about public safety issues:
Monty writes:
Our Maryland coverage is moving into the front section. You’ll find local, regional, nation & world, business all housed in the first section of the paper.
In addition, business is no longer a stand-alone section. It moves to the front section as well:
The opinion and OpEd pages:
—
SPORTS
The Sun’s sports section — redesigned just last fall as a tab — returns to broadsheet format. Monty tells me the format for the sports front has changed a bit from this prototype that appears in the readers’ guide published today:
He does send along, however, this prototype football Gameday front:
The daily section will feature increased coverage of blogs and face-to-face debates on various topics:
An inside sports page:
—
FEATURES
Will be renamed the You section: You & the movies, You & Your health, You & Your Digital World, You & Your home and garden and so on. Each day will feature a different theme.
—
SUNDAY
While business is no longer a standalone section on weekdays, it will get its own section on Sunday: Money & Life. Also appearing only on Sundays: Closeup, Travel and Real Estate:
—
Find a web site that explains all the changes here. You’ll find a video, a Flash presentation, page samples and a downloadable PDF readers’ guide.
Read a thread at VizEds about the previous Sun redesign in 2005.
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:01 pm
As always Charles-a great look at a redesign. Thanks.
Is it just me, or does the whole redesign business take on a life of its own, from promos to user-guides? It may matter to “us” but does any real reader spend the time to watch videos, pdf’s and flash presentations on HOW to “read” their newspaper. Especially when the new Sun is just a remake of the 3-year-old Sun. All these redesigns are looking the same-even the color schemes too. Even the editors notes about being easier for us “time starved” readers and having to try to convince people that their type really isn’t smaller and that they are just as local, all begins to sound the same from one city to the next. I am not complaining, just observing that readers hardly have time to get used to an “old” paper before they get the “new and improved.”
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I think Dennis makes a good point. Besides, if you need a “how to read your new paper” guide for your readers, then how user-friendly is your redesign?
The pages look good. But here’s what I wonder about: A lot of the Tribune redesigns we are seeing look very colorful and lively in thumbnail size on screen, but what about when you’re holding them in your hand in the form of a broadsheet? Do designs that look good on screen still look good when scaled up significantly? Will the design devices that “pop” on screen become overpowering when scaled up? Also, a lot of the design devices, such as the big solid color backgrounds and heavy use of reverse type, require very precise production or they’ll muck things up more than help things. And of course, there’s the fact that you’re printing these designs on crappy newsprint. I wonder if the current presses and paper can adequately accommodate the new designs.
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Like the Sun-Sentinel, the old one was nice and the new one is nice. But then, there’s the content. On the drive back to Connecticut from Fort Lauderdale, I bought a Baltimore Sun on a Sunday afternoon (Aug. 10) about 20 miles north of the city. I’m hoping it was some kind of weird, early edition they publish because it was totally lacking news in the A section. All long feature/enterprise stories. In fact, one was an AP piece that we ran before my two-week vacation. I felt robbed. Again, nicely done on a visual level; I hope it goes deeper than that.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:45 pm
I really like the new look and the space allotted to content but what’s up with the full body shots of the columnists? I always thought it weird that the Sun did those waist-up shots but now it’s the full monty?
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:39 pm
The Trib’s summer of redesign continues! Finally the concept of a Maga-paper is taking hold in the U.S. Reminds me a little of the pioneering Singapore’s Straits-Times design from a few years ago. It’s a good concept and long overdue for a try in U.S metros. What is up with the huge baltsun.com promo under the flag?
Monty and company should be proud of this effort - there are some really nice touches here - esp those inside pages. I like the toppers! (They sort of remind me of The Exmanier’s) Just kidding.
Keep up the good work and kudos.
August 23rd, 2008 at 3:46 pm
I am also surprised by the full-body shots of columnists. It seems really unnecessary and distracting.
August 23rd, 2008 at 7:26 pm
One of the most exciting innovations to come out of Baltimore than non one has mentioned: Modular ad stacks. Wouldn’t it really be something if this finally took off in American papers?
August 23rd, 2008 at 8:48 pm
I’m with Robb on the magazine look. There’s a lot to like in the BaltSun’s redesign, and I will be interested to see what reader reception is like. I like the little snippets from the marketing campaign. Nice to see a little attitude!
I don’t like the new nameplate. It tries to do too much. It’s also a little cartoony — it puts me in mind of the IHT’s old nameplate art. The outgoing art is much more elegant, and there’s not so much crammed around it. That said, I like the name “Baltimore” in the nameplate. It gives a sense of place. Probably should have been done a long time ago.
August 24th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Agreed on the modular ads. I’ve been wanting to hear more about how that’s working after being told by so many people at so many papers that it’s impossible to sell to advertisers. With the web widths getting narrower and narrower, it’s getting to be a bigger and bigger issue.
August 24th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Bo and Paul make good points about modular ad stack. Some of the NYT papers in Florida decided two months ago to adopt modular ad stack for their redesigns that debut in November.
August 24th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I’ll toss out something on the modular ad stack issue. We wanted desperately to go to this in 2005 for the prior redesign, but advertising was concerned about loss of revenue.
When we launched “b”, our free daily young adult publication, earlier this year, one of the things we insisted on was modular ad sizes and stacks. This is something RedEye has used from the beginning, and it’s very effective on several fronts.
Designers like it, of course, because they have more usable space for content. Usable space is also better for copy editors and headline writing, and makes it less likely that stories will need massive trims to fit those holes left by 5-column by 18-inch ad stacks.
Beyond that, the cleanness of the modular format puts more readers’ eyeballs on the content AND on the ads. Readers are more likely to spend time with each.
It was a big change for The Sun’s advertising department to agree to and put into practice, but once they had worked through the issues for “b”, it seemed logical to consider it for the broadsheet to make efficiencies for potential up-sells.
This was all decided an launched, by the way, in 2 1/2 months.
We decided on several steps for the creation of modular ad sizes and stacks:
– a four-column grid instead of six columns. This more effectively divides ads into multiples of four on the page. Easier to stack, easier to square off. Our new one column size is approximately 16p8.
– I created initially 18 ad sizes that would fit into this space. Through negotiation with our advertising department and advertiser needs, we have upped the number of ad sizes to a total of 25. And no more than that.
– We eliminated the page-killer ads that are 5×18. But there are advertisers who want large ads without purchasing a full-page ad so that content will be placed next to it. So we created two new “page-killer” sizes: a 4×15.75-inch ad and a 3xFULL ad in the new column widths. This allows the advertiser their need and provides usable space for news content on the page. If ads stack higher than 15.75 inches, the entire page must be used.
We do allow one step of ad stack on a page, and so far, we’ve only had a few pages that weren’t completely squared off.
I must give a lot of credit to The Sun’s advertising department and VP/Advertising Linda Hastings for her flexibility and willingness to adopt this format.
What have we found? Most advertisers have been more than accepting of the format. One caveat has been movie advertising, which we are housing under MUP labels as we work to migrate them over the next few months to the new sizes. For advertisers who are unwilling to resize their ad, we will float them in the space. But so far, we’ve had excellent communication and workflow on the new ad sizes.
Another benefit has been a reduction in forced newshole because of late ad sells. We have strictly mapped out for each day’s edition and section newshole and ad space. This doesn’t restrict advertising from selling more ads, just provides a baseline for starting. The ad hole, news hole, marketing space budgets were all kept separately before this change. Managing all the space at once benefits the entire company and keeps newsprint costs down. And newsprint costs are expected to rise to $800 a metric ton in 2009, not good news on the expense side.
In addition to more usable space and better visability for ads, there is another benefit that all newspapers have to consider: protecting future revenue.
As newspapers continue to narrow their web widths, it’s easier to protect that revenue when a quarter-page ad is still a quarter-page ad — no matter the size of the product — than when you’re still accepting your revenue by the inch.
So we’ve just combined modular pricing of ads with modular sizes for better stacks in the product.
This seems to us an opportunity for more newspapers to adopt a format similar to this. Unifying size of ads and stacking principles can also help to cross-sell national/regional ads across markets.
I may have forgotten a few points, so if anyone has questions, feel free to contact me here in Baltimore.
Monty Cook
Director of Content Development
The Baltimore Sun
August 24th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
I’m assuming Luci wasn’t involved with this reincarnation.
August 24th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
All of the Trib redesigns are in-house redesigns. Lucie and I have kept in touch since our 2005 project, and I contacted her early on as a courtesy to let her know that a mandate for change meant The Sun would have to move past that project. It was a bittersweet call, because working on that redesign with her was a career highlight.
August 25th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Excellent work, Monty. As usual, it’s clean, easy to navigate and everything is done for a reason.
Congratulations!
August 25th, 2008 at 9:01 am
I speak to this purely as a longtime reader and subscriber who grew up with both the morning and evening Sunpapers in the household. The new paper looks like a desperate attempt to interest young people in reading newspapers. The employment section, in particular, with its cute featurette on “Screwing Around at Work” is an abomination. And half of the main news section on Sunday, August 23rd consisted of ads. Add to this the loss of long time features and a daily comics section that now looks as if the layout were prepared by a sightless critter and you have a paper that thoroughly lives up to the cynical comment of the late, great Texas journalist Molly Ivins: “Newspapers are the only business that responds to financial problems by making their product less useful.”
August 26th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
I am a subscriber to the Baltimore Sun. Here is a copy of what I sent to ‘feedback@baltsun.com’ (per Tim Franklin’s request to readers for feedback):
“Hello Tim — I’m e-mailing you regarding the feedback you requested from readers concerning the redesign/reinvention of the Baltimore Sun.
Here are some initial thoughts:
1. I don’t think the interaction of all of these various fonts works. You have the old Times Roman and Times Italic combined with this new font (Arial?), and I find it very confusing and visually disjointed.
2. I didn’t really notice that the paper’s name had been ‘changed’ to the Baltimore Sun. I’ve always referred to it as such, and even Dan Rodricks calls it the Baltimore Sun on his ‘Midday’ show on WYPR, so to me it is a non-issue in search of meaning.
3. I’m really not interested in seeing full body photos of the columnists. I find it very distracting from the article and unnecessary (I’d much prefer to have more words in that extra space!). Plus, I find that I’m focusing more on the pose the people are striking, how fat or skinny they look compared to their earlier photo, and what they are wearing (Paul Moore’s tie looking a bit long, Sloane Brown’s shoes looking two sizes too big for her feet, etc). And what’s with all the arms crossed in people’s photos? It makes them look really uptight and like they are hiding something (or is it an attempt to make them look like hard-hitting, no-nonsense, tough as nails reporters?).
4. I am not crazy about having to go to the Baltimore Sun website for more info on a particular story — I spend enough time on the computer, and want to get all the information that the Sun is able to provide in the newspaper. My wife and I enjoy having our coffee in the morning sitting on our couch in the kitchen, and the idea of cozying up to a computer in the morning really runs contrary to what I like about a newspaper — mind you, this could be more about me than anything (I’m 42, self-employed, Master’s degree, married and live in Linthicum. I’ve also been a newspaper reader since I was about 8).
5. Since it’s only been one day since this revision was introduced, I can’t really comment on how easy or not easy it is to find things in the paper. I was able to find things in the ‘old’ version quite easily, and I felt a bit lost this morning with the ‘new’ paper (what’s Norm Lewis doing on A2?!), but I’m sure after a while a person can get used to anything.
6. The very reason my wife and I read the newspaper is to be part of an intellectual discussion that is driven by people who are more informed than ourselves (the columnists, the experts they are quoting, the editorials, etc). I find this making the paper a ‘more visual newspaper for a more visual age’ potentially a dumbing down of the information in an attempt to attract the lowest common denominator. I don’t particularly need bright colors and big pictures to attract me to the paper, and I don’t presume to think that it will entice others.
So I think that’s about it for now. I don’t know whether this redesign will help to attract new readers or not. As someone who is somewhat involved in the publication industry, I know of various magazines that seem to be redesigning every 6 months (or at least it seems that way to me) with varying bottom line results. I think I recall Family Circle Magazine redesigning a number of years ago in an attempt to attract younger and more ‘hip’ readers. Unfortunately, their readership actually went down! So, I really wonder sometimes for whom some publications redesign. It could be that they do it for themselves in an attempt to invigorate the morale at the publication. Yet, if they didn’t redesign, the readers probably wouldn’t care anyways (I mean, I really don’t care what kind of font you use or whether you use a green banner across the top or a plaid one!).
I’d be more than happy to be part of any future discussion group concerning the design of the Baltimore Sun or its content. Please contact me if you’d like to discuss any of these aspects further.”
Now, after having lived with the ‘new’ paper for a few days, I don’t know if I’ll be able to get used to this new format. For example, why have they pushed the ‘Letters to the Editor’ to the fringes of the editorial pages? Very odd choice. Plus, from a purely self-interested perspective, the front section is disproportionately larger than the ‘You’ section — my wife and I divide the paper in the morning over our coffee and toast (neither one of us reads the Sports section), so one of us gets stuck with the 6 page ‘You’ section, while the other one controls the lavish front section.
A bit unfair!
August 26th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
What a play on words. You say the paper was reinvented what a joke. You mean cost cutting at the readers expense. This paper now defines the word rag for a news paper. All you have done was to take up space with pictures and ads. There is no indepth story on any news local,national or world. Your section around the region looks like something a high school would print. I know there has to be more going on in Baltimore City and the counties. This paper is so lacking and thin a person from Baltimore would not be able to line their kitchen table to eat steamed crabs as our families have done for years. I am going to stop my subscription and find better use for my money.
August 28th, 2008 at 8:19 am
I’m curious to know what newspaper designers think of this new Sun. As a Baltimore resident and reader of the Sun for more than 20 years, I can tell you that the thought among me and my neighbors, all of whom are subscribers (for now) is this is a complete disaster. The Sun is a shell of its former self.
I gave it a few days to try and let it sink in, and granted, maybe I need to give it much longer, but for the first time since I’ve been reading morning papers as a child, I don’t even care if I see the Sun in the morning.
Granted, I’m not the hip 20something the Sun is trying (and failing) to attract with this stunt, but I am a loyal newspaper reader and coule be for, god willing, another 30 or 40 years. But not if this paper keeps it up.
The full-body columnist shots are an unbelievable waste of space, this at the same time the Sun has told us they need to cut things like book reviews, horse racing results, comics, etc., and other features because of space restrictions.
The graphics are too loud and garish, and the color schemes seem to be trying to knock you over the head and say “I’m so cool! Like me!”
The front page has become worthless. Three stories instead of four, and one of them is a columnist (with full body shot, of course). You have to look long and hard for real news.
And the weather page has inexplicably gone black and white. As USA Today proved, a color weather page is one thing that, on a quick glance, gives you a ton of information. But the Sun has taken it off the back page of a section, making it much harder to find, and made it black and white, making it much harder to glean any information from it.
The most maddening, insulting thing about all of this, as a reader, is the Sun continues to pound to us that this is what the readers want. I don’t know if any readers who want less news, full body pictures of columnists, an ugly weather page, and less stuff in the paper.
Here’s the real scary thing, though, that no one is saying: I read somewhere that Tribune papers are supposed to move to a 50-50 split between stories and advertisiing. The new Sun is nowhere close to that. So I suspect after this honeymoon stage, we’ll actually see much LESS in the paper and even more ads. The readers will then leave in droves.
And to think — this whole redesign — just a few years after another redesign that involved no doubt millions of dollars — is supposed to draw readers in.
As I said, it’s an unqualified disaster.
August 28th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I will agree with Matt in one major thing. The marketing aspect that this paper is more “YOU” is annoying. Even if it is true, it seems a bit presumptuous. People see right through marketing speak like that. Any ad that says it’s everything I want is going to be a failure.
It’s a fundamental principal of writing. Don’t say that a character is happy, nice, etc. Show the reader. If a character is nice, a writer should have the character do something kind. If a newspaper is what people want, then it should tell me what it has to offer and why. And in their marketing they need to show the reader what they have and tell me why it should appeal. The “YOU” section of the paper is just a put off for everyone
August 29th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Yesterday I cancelled my subscription to the Sun after 16 years. I’ve been baffled over the last few years as I’ve watched the paper emulate the worst of the Web–shallow reporting; garish, obtrusive advertising; focus on differences rather than informing; etc.–rather than playing on its strengths.
This “redesign” left me feeling repulsed when I read the paper. Yes, the experience of reading it actually caused me negative emotions. As I explained to the woman on the phone as I cancelled (”Two weeks free?”, “How about just 75 cents per week?”) I just don’t want it anymore. It isn’t about the money, it is the experience of reading it.
At 38 years old, I probably lie in the middle between their classic audience and those they are desperately trying to attract. I loved the tangible experience of thumbing through the newspaper with my breakfast every morning. I don’t watch television news. However, I must move on. I’ve already begun the process of gathering news feeds that I will script to print out each morning before I get up. Is it the same? No. But the Sun’s time is past.
August 29th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Well, I guess if you no longer have the resources to produce any real journalism or reporting, then plan B should be to print a bunch of REALLY BIG PHOTOGRAPHS. Did they think we wouldn’t notice?
August 31st, 2008 at 8:53 am
The redesign makes this paper look more like a super-sized magazine than a newspaper. I think that there would be too much going on for the older readers. And, as someone mentioned in a comment earlier, what about the gratuitous amounts of ink that will be used to produce this new-fangled contraption? On a similar note, judging from the look of this, the ink is going to pose a major bleed issue, as well as making readers’ fingers really messy when reading.
Who wants to have to wash their hands while reading mid-article?
September 1st, 2008 at 4:15 pm
There are many aspects of the redesign to deplore — the full-bodied photos, the blog snippets, the disorganization in the metro news — but all of it pales next to the larger issue of how little space is left for news of any sort. I agree with the criticism that it is a losing proposition to try to ape the Internet in print. The Tribune, for reasons that I don’t understand, has adopted the philosophy that newspapers are for non-readers. I think that is a strategy that will lead directly to oblivion.
To survive, newspapers needed to protect their brand, to provide in-depth reporting, analysis and storytelling that simply is not done elsewhere. Even if the cutbacks are necessary, it seemed to me that newspapers had to provide something of value, true excellence in reporting and writing that readers could not find elsewhere. Instead, the paper has dumbed down and diluted itself. It has become superficial where insight and thorough reporting were required. Instead of the belief that readers wanted to understand the world beyond them, it has adopted the philosophy that people are mainly interested in themselves. Instead of surprise, it presents the obvious. This degradation has gone on for some years now, ushered in by The Tribune but now accelerated. It may be too late to turn back at this point because of the exodus of talent, but certainly Baltimore will not have the paper it deserves as long as it is in the hands of The Tribune, which not only does not value journalism, but is actively hostile to it. (Journalists are excluded from the uppermost reaches of the company, which is full of radio people.)
Until this summer, I was a reporter and editor at The Sun for almost a quarter of a century. I am certain there is not a journalist who remains there who is proud of the transformation that the paper has undergone. They are heartbroken.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:42 am
I have been reading newspapers for over 40 years. This new design is horrible. When my wife first saw the full length photos of staff, she said she was reminded of the old saying, “You’ve got a great face for radio!” Years ago, a Sun reporter wrote a story about a kid with a bike who had an accident with an auto. The story was balanced, had nuances, and made you symphathize with the driver and then the kid. It made you think; that’s what the best news writing does. That’s what missing today in newspapers. Also, I find the new design visually overwhelming. I agree with an ealier post that on computer screen it really pops but on paper, it loses that quality. I am also tired of being told what I want (that includes you, Microsoft!) Sadly, what the new design has done is force me to use Google News and Baltimoresun.com in the morning. The morning Sun lies on the table now and patiently waits for the cats to walk over it.
September 20th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
When one thinks of great design, do they think of an iPod or a Zune? Do they think of Microsoft Windows or Apple OSX? Do they think of an Audi A4 or a Dodge Neon painted up in day-glow colors?
If your answer is the iPod, OSX and the Audi, then one must only look at these things and ask what it is that they all have in common. Simplicity. Elegance. Ease of use. Clean. No gimmicks. No need for a user guide.
Now look at these redesigned pages again and ask yourselves (and be honest, no matter your personal or professional attachment to those pages): Are these elegant? Simple? Easy to use? Clean? Free of gimmicks?
Readers want solid content about the news of their communities, country and the world. Not noise or packaging akin to a comic book.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:43 am
Well after having suffered through a month of the ‘new’ Baltimore Sun, we cancelled our subscription and now get the New York Times every day. What a joy to read a real newspaper!
January 13th, 2009 at 11:22 am
We cancelled the Sun paper, two reasons…One the sport section has changed so much that my husband quit reading it… 2nd. reason, is that I ask for my carrier to not throw my paper on the ground, but to put it in the container (sun paper container), but for somereason she/he insist on throwing it on the wet grass, which I have to walk on to get to it, and bending down at 66/70 is not that easy these days..I do like the travel section and miss it.. Would like that to be sent to my in box..
thank you