Hartford Courant reverts to more conventional A1 look
Last fall, the Hartford Courant redesigned as part of an overall Tribune company redesign mandate. One of the dramatic changes to a paper that many agreed was one of the nations’ best-designed: Pushing the paper’s nameplate vertically down the side of A1.
A couple of weeks ago, the Courant began asking readers to sound off on which prototype A1 they prefer: What they were doing then, something more conventional or something with a nameplate reversed out of blue.
Today, the Courant changed the look of its front. On the left is a live page from April; on the right is today’s A1:
The Associated Press reports today:
The Hartford Courant has a new, old look, ditching a redesign in had put in place last fall.
On Monday, the newspapers returned its masthead to the top of the front page.
A closer look at the new front:
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UPDATE
Poynter’s Sara Quinn also wrote about this on Wednesday, July 1. Find that piece here.
June 29th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
I’m glad to see they ditched the vertical masthead and reverted back to something that more closely resembles their old style.
I wish they wouldn’t have introduced so many drop caps into this new front, though. I think that by starting each story with a drop cap rather saving them exclusively for a center piece cheapens their effectiveness as both a design element and entry point. Case in point, the tertiary story has a drop cap that displays heavier than the headline weight. That bugs me.
My only other gripe is that I think they went overboard with the use of blue. Less would’ve been more for me.
Of course, design is subjective and everyone has an opinion… I’m just glad they’re back to their more traditional look.
June 29th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
How many Tribune papers have now retrenched their page design from last year’s splashy redesigns to a more traditional approach this year?
I applaud the willingness to take some visual risks, but it would have been nice to see some more redesigns with staying power.
June 29th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Why blue? Red, black and tan were always their colors.
If they wanted to get rid of the sideways nameplate, then just go back to the original design — it was damn near flawless before the mandatory redesign.
It saddens me to see such a beautiful paper lose its identity on (what seams like) a whim.
June 29th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
There’s less color on here than they showed in last week’s examples, but it’s still way more than they should be using.
Everyone here is right. They shouldn’t have screwed with the old old design at all. This is just saving face. And this isn’t the same.
June 29th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
In all honesty, I was one of the few that never cared for the Courant’s design everyone praised as “elegant and refined.” It’s a newspaper, not holiday dinnerware. That said, I thought the vertical nameplate was contrived, and felt like misdirection — if they made the nameplate vertical and everyone noticed that, they didn’t really have to change much else.
I’m glad they reverted to their classic nameplate, but, yeah, the repeated blue feels a bit forced.
June 30th, 2009 at 8:46 am
Wow, they completely redesigned their website, too (to match with the blue, I guess)…
June 30th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Straighten up those deck chairs!
June 30th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
The nameplate’s been tampered with! WHERE’S THE PERIOD?
July 1st, 2009 at 9:13 pm
I have to admit, the ONLY change to the (now) “old” Courant that I liked was the vertical masthead. It was different, it was unique, it was cool (and honestly, we all KNOW the name of the paper, right?)
All the other changes to the design seemed to be about either:
1) Hiding the fact of shrinking content (sorry, can’t be done), or
2) Mimicking website design (which just doesn’t fly on the printed page, guys.) The blue words at the end of each “Quick Take” scream “Click on me - I’m a hyperlink!” But where’s the mouse??
Now the paper looks like something out of the early 1960s. The blue is sickly, passive, Tribune-light. The front page says: “We don’t know what direction to take - so we’re trying hard to take none at all.”
And not to get too much into content, but look at what is offered on the sample (which the design, one assumes, is meant to complement): a space-eating photo for a story about a gimmicky TV show; a sports story; ONE genuine “news” story; and a bunch of super-shrunk summaries with dead links, dominated by a space-eating photo (an ad, actually) for a dead TV pitchman.
As a Connecticut resident, I’d dearly love to have something more substantial on my porch every morning.
July 1st, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Just got back into town. Took a quick look at the new/newer Courants on the doorstep. I might be wrong, but it looks like 1A is all they changed.