Charles Apple

The Farmington Independent, a 2,100-circulation weekly in south central Minnesota, redesigned last week, editor Nathan Hansen writes in his column:

The Independent’s new look is the result of several months of work, and the changes we’ve made are meant to make the paper look more modern and give us some new ways to bring you information.

The new look will provides more space on the front of the paper for us to tell you what’s inside. And the redesign of a few key pages — our Looking back and Events pages chief among them — should allow us to bring you more information in an easier-to-read format.

A before-and-after look at page one:

When we asked for samples, Nathan responded:

I guess I deserve most of the credit or blame for the changes. There was input from others in our office, but this was pretty much my project. We’re an office of eight full-time employees that puts out two weekly newspapers (both with circulations in the 2,000-2,500 range) so there wasn’t much of a budget for consultants. I’d appreciate any comments you have on the change.

Normally, Nathan, we shy away from critiquing redesigns. There are simply too many moving parts to take into account. Plus, we don’t think we get proper perspective by seeing only a PDF of an entire paper’s redesign.

But since you asked so nicely, we’d be glad to give you some pointers.

First of all, let us say up front: We love the new look. It’s clean; it’s crisp; there is an amount of white space that one doesn’t often see in smaller papers. White space is a very, very important part of design.

And we like the new color scheme. The orange and blue play off each other very well. We hope they’re working together as well in print as they do in the electronic page you sent;

Also, you appear to be cropping your photos very well. That’s another common mistake seen at small papers with fewer resources: Poor photo editing. But the lead photo on your new front as well as the pictures on your previous, pre-redesign edition, are played perfectly. Nicely done.

In fact, we can come up with only two quibbles with your new format. These might be major or minor, depending on your point of view.

1. Vertical spacing

We love white space. And again, you’re using it very well. but look at all that space under your lede package and above your column. Better yet, look at the space under your top strip and over your lede package. Notice how your “Fire” label kind of looks like it’s drifting away.

That’s because your page is losing a little structural intregrity from time to time. Don’t fret because it’s a common problem with an easy solution. In fact, you used the solution in your previous format: Rules.

Do us a favor: Draw a half-point horizontal rule under the story stripped across the top and another one atop your column stripped across the bottom. While you’re at it, drop a vertical half-point rule in the gutter between your centerpiece and the entertainment story running down the right side. See how it keeps everything together?

We’re guessing you wanted a cleaner look, so you’ve done away with the column rules. You might try bringing them back. Use them wisely, though — for example, there’s no need to put your centerpiece in a box, like you did on your previous front. — just use a few simple rules to separate it from the stories around it.

2. Typography

You’ve changed your fonts. And that’s a good thing — fonts go in and out of style. So updating your typography from time to time can help your paper feel fresh and modern.

However, we’re looking at your page and we’re seeing too many fonts. You might want to drop a few of them in hopes of simplifying your look.

We’re counting:

1. Your nameplate, which is Britannic. Which we love, by the way.
2. The name of your town, under the nameplate. Futura.
3. The headline font you’re using in the strip story up top, about the arrest is Futura Condensed. Related to Futura, of course, but the condensed font plus the extra squeeze transforms it into a completely different-looking face.
4. The headline font you’re using in your centerpiece story, Bell. That’s the bold version of the same headline font on the story beside it, too, and your column below. But in the centerpiece, it’s not coming up bold enough. So you’re having to stroke it a bit to beef it up. You’re also using Bell in your bylines.
5. The font on the little orange story labels. Looks like Franklin Gothic Bold, perhaps, but it’s coming up here as Largo.
6. The font on the little orange labels in your skyboxes and your left-side rail: Impact. Which is the same font you’re using on the headlines in the rail and reversed out of the blue bar up top.
7. The body copy in your rail, Folio.
8. The body copy in your skyboxes, Britannic.
9. The body copy in your stories, Gazette.

And that’s just off the top of our heads. Our laptop tells us there’s also Euphremia and Berling lurking about in your document, but we didn’t find those.

This might take a little work to fix, should you be inclined.

Typically, we’d advise a paper to have only four news typefaces: 1) The nameplate, 2) A font for body copy (including bold, italic and so on), 3) A font for headlines (bold and light), and 4) An “accent font,” that you’d use for everything else.

We’d recommend…

• Use the same font in your skybox copy that you use in your rail copy. Also, consider using a heavy, condensed weight as the headlines for both. We understand your wanting to move away from the dated feel of Franklin Gothic, but find something that gives you all the tools you need. Lots of papers have moved to Interstate for this. The Virginian-Pilot uses Vonnes. Find on that works for you and run with it.
• Use that same font for your boldest headline. Make that sucker really pop.
• Use that same font for your orange rail and story labels. Basically, for all your sans-serif heds and labels.
• For your other headlines — basically, your serif heds — use something that is bold enough to stand out on the page, yet is thin enough to give you a good word count. If you’re having to squeeze a typeface that’s already condensed — as in the Futura Condensed on your arrest story hed — then you’re not using the right font. Likewise, if you’re having to stroke a hed to beef it up — like on your grass fire package, then your font isn’t giving you the tools you need. You might look around for a serif font with bolder weights.

So what you want are four main fonts:

1. Your nameplate. Don’t use that font anywhere else.
2. Your text body copy.
3. Your primary headline font. This would unite all your serif fonts.
4. Your accent font. This would be all your promo heads and body copy in the skyline and rail, your cutlines, your jumplines, your story labels, your bylines… basically everything else.

Those are our major suggestions. A couple more minor ones…

• The bold words in your jump lines are awfully bold. You might want to use a lighter weight or consider bumping those bold words back to 50 percent black.
• The centered copy blocks in your skybox seem detached from the photos they accompany. You might try flushing them left or right and nestling them up closer to their photos.

Now, we’re pretty decent at using typography, but we’re not big enough typography fanatics to be able to rattle off suggestions on what to try (or, better yet, suggestions on what might already be in your type library that you might try).

Luckily, though, a number of our readers are type phreaks. Any suggestions, guys? Keep in mind, Nathan probably has very little budget with which to buy fonts.

Don’t let all this discussion throw you off the main point, though, Nathan. That main point is this: You did a great job with your redesign.

That’s a fine-looking paper you have there. We know of many, many larger dailies that don’t look this good. For a 2,100-circulation weekly, especially, you look damn sharp.

Good job. And thanks for sharing your pages with us.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 9:57 am and is filed under Redesigns, Small papers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.