Redesign: Tiny, 6,000-circulation Laramie, Wyoming
The Boomerang — circulation, 6,000 — of Laramie, Wyo., launched a redesign last Tuesday.
Norfolk-based news design consultant Alan Jacobson did the honors.
Seems like a typical Jacobson redesign with all Alan’s fingerprints: Bold use of huge visuals, tightly-cropped photos, enormous attention spent on crafting active, engaging headlines.
And someone low-maintenance, evidently. Alan writes:
Here are the first two section fronts. The primary headline font families are Relay and Parkinson.
I think these two pages are pretty strong, considering how small the newspaper is. They have no designers on staff, just two copy editors who do all the pages each night.
Alan also sent along a big batch of before-and-after prototypes.
The biz front:
Alan writes:
Check out 7200 - it’s Laramie’s weekly entertainment page, and also it’s altitude above sea level.
The regional front:
And a whole lot of page one prototypes…
Want to see them slightly larger? Tickle the thumbnails.
Alan writes:
According to the publisher, Don Black, “Response so far has been predominantly favorable.”
A few reader comments, positive and negative:
* I just thought I’d let you know that I love the new format and am excited about your new content ideas! The Boomerang this morning is much more convenient and readable!
* There remains much work to be done to really improve the paper. While the additional graphics and typographic composition give the newspaper a more contemporary look, I suspect that more than a little caution is advised. The newspaper now closely resembles USA Today; which in my estimation is not necessarily a good thing.
Here are some specific concerns regarding formatting:
1. The mix of headline fonts and sizes is jarring and makes the page hard to absorb.2. The generous use of white space, and use of ragged right margins, does make for a better presentation, but I’m afraid that the effective reduction in words printed per page, the content that I seek, suffers as a result.
3. While shorter articles, and sidebars with bulleted points, are much in vogue, they reflect poorly upon the attention span of your readers, and give one the sense that there is no real depth in the articles.
* I think it looks ridiculous! The design is terrible. The news items you choose to cover are a bit better. I’d rather see local news than news about something trivial in some other country! But the design is too extreme. Please back down a bit. And, place the name of the newspaper at the top of the front page so it is obvious rather than being lost in the exaggerated headlines.
* I really like the updated look of the paper, especially the prominently featured photos.
* I think it looks fine, I only hope everything in it will improve. I would think it would have been embarrassing, all the mistakes that have been published. During the UW athletic season, there was a time when the Cowboy basketball team and Cowgirl basketball team’s time and place of their game were the same. There have been so many misspelled words during the past year.
* The new paper is a much needed improvement.  It is about 80% better than the old format. Now if we could get the printing back in Laramie and some of the old comic strips back, it would be 100% better.
* Perhaps the new format will appeal to the younger generation, but to
me it looks cluttered and unprofessional.* Looks like the work of a third grader with a new box of crayons.
Congratulations, Alan, on yet another bold brassy redesign!
See Alan’s last redesign project — in Cheyenne, Wyoming — here. Read more about Alan’s design consulting work at Brass Tacks Design.
August 11th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
I liked Alan’s last redesign I saw, but this … this just seems like too much. It’s almost too bold for the amount of content there is. Like, sure, the display words say a lot with punch, but on the fronts, those headlines take up over a third of all the real estate on the page – that’s a huge amount for a broadsheet.
Granted, there’s not a huge staff there for content breakdown, but it just feels all wrong for whatever reason. I liked the Idaho Statesman redesign Alan did far more than this.
I have no clue why the SunSentinel’s redesign doesn’t bother me, but this does. It might be the balance.
August 12th, 2008 at 10:13 am
I dunno, Ernie, as long as they can come up with enough stuff to fill the top half of the page, I don’t have a problem with the tabloidy presentation. Why should a small-town paper have to be just like every other small-town paper?
August 13th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Okay, so regardless of what you think of the redesign, I have to reply to the reader that said the redesign makes it look like USA Today.
No. It. Does. Not.
In fact, the old paper has more in common with USA Today than the new one. Go look at today’s USA Today front page. Below the fold and to the right of the 1 1/2 column rail, there isn’t one picture, screen or bit of color. It’s a giant sea of gray. The dominant photo on the page is a 3 1/2 column horizontal. Anyone who still uses the tired cliché about USA Today to put down a redesign isn’t paying any attention. Please, people, make whatever comments you want about the new paper - love it, hate it, set it on fire. But stop with the USA Today comparisons.
August 14th, 2008 at 2:01 am
Heh. I’ve always found it amusing that people try to put down newspapers by claiming they’re “too much like USA Today.”
Yeah. Too much like the No. 1-selling newspaper in the country.
Reminds me of all the folks out there in their 40s and 50s who claim they hated disco music in the 1970s. Well, hell: SOMEBODY bought those damn records!
Yes, you read that correctly. I just compared USA Today to disco music.