Charles Apple

Scott Goldman, assistant managing editor for the Indianapolis Star, sent us a nice selection of pages from the Star’s special Super Bowl section.

In fact, today’s is the second special Super Bowl section the Star has published. You saw the cover of Thursday’s section, right? Saturday’s special section will be 16 pages. Sunday’s will be 32 pages, Scott tells us.

Scott writes:

Today was our day to focus on the Saints and Drew Brees. Cover design by Amanda Goehlert.

Click any of these special section pages for a larger view:

The big inside feature on Brees, with fabulous play of a great photo by the Associated Press. In particular, I like the graphic treatment of the cheer, down the right side:

Here’s a nice graphic on how the Saints built their starting lineup:

Scott writes:

The big graphic highlight of the day was a full-page infographic on the Saints history, using Mardi Gras beads as the main image, by Stephen Beard (who’s having quite a week for himself):

Stephen himself tells us:

The bead concept was one of those fading-off-to-sleep ideas. I got out of bed and drew out a grid to represent 43 seasons, filling in L’s and W’s (mostly L’s), and tallied up the records. I wanted to drive home the heartache of the franchise, and cheap, plastic Mardi Gras beads seemed to do the trick. I boned up on the use of symbol instances in Illustrator and had some fun.

Clicking on that jpeg will give you a larger look. If that’s not quite enough for you, however, click here for a PDF.

Scott continues:

We also had our editorial cartoonist Gary Varvel do a hilarious full-page cartoon for Super Bowl week:

Great stuff — reminiscent of the old Mad magazine, back when Mad was actually fresh and funny.

Again, embiggenate that with a click. Or go here for a very high resolution jpeg.

Find Gary Varvel’s cartoon blog here.

Here’s today’s Indianapolis Star front page, featuring a story and photo of Haiti native Pierre Garcon, named the most valuable player in the conference championship game, two weeks ago:

Average daily circulation of the Star is 201,823.

The Kokomo Tribune put emphasis today on the activities for young people being staged in the area around the Super Bowl venue:

The Tribune circulates 20,587 papers daily.

The Times-Picayune of New Orleans — circulation 159,655 — today focused on the owner of the Saints. Truly, the toast of the town this week:

As you can see from the promo across the bottom, the Times-Picayune promises not a special section, but a magazine will insert Saturday.

The Sun Herald of Biloxi — circulation 44,613 — ran a profile on tight end Jeremy Shockey…

…while the Advocate of Baton Rouge — circulation 87,881 — ran a fresh photo of Brees out front and refered to more stories inside:

And in the Miami market — where the game itself will be played Sunday night — both of the big papers played up spectacle and hoopla. The Sun Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale led page one with pictures of jet-setters setting their jets at the local airports…

…while the Miami Herald — circulation 162,260 — put a picture from a “fan jam” concert out front today:

I should note that the Herald, too, is running a special section every day. If anyone there would like to share graphics, pages or covers of those sections, I’d love to post ‘em.

Also, note the Dave Barry promo downpage. I’m a huge fan of Dave’s work. How about we end with an excerpt from today’s column?

Security at this year’s Super Bowl is very tight, Dave writes:

Q. How tight is it?

A. Yesterday the Air Force shot down the Goodyear Blimp.

So if you’re going to the game, be prepared to be subjected to heightened security, as follows:

• There will be no tailgating within a 75-mile radius of the stadium. This is in response to intelligence reports of a disturbing new al Qaeda weapon, “The Kielbasa of Death.”
• No objects of any kind will be allowed anywhere; this includes watches, wallets, phones, dentures, pacemakers and artificial limbs. Anyone holding an umbrella will be taken out by snipers.
• Nobody will be allowed inside the stadium wearing underpants. This rule will be enforced by a specially trained all-German-shepherd security unit, the Groin Patrol.
• Nobody will be allowed to go to the bathroom during the second half.
• No congregating of any kind will be permitted; this includes players forming a huddle.

Find Dave Barry’s Friday column here. Read Dave’s previous Super Bowl piece — a primer on what not to do in Miami — here.

Find the Dave Barry archive page here.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 2:19 pm and is filed under A look at the day's fronts, Graphics, Illustration, News design, Sports design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.