Charles Apple

Earlier today, I posted a winter Olympics page from Des Moines and linked to the fine batch of special section covers collected by Rich Boudet of the SportsDesigner blog.

Krissi Humbard of the Army Times publishing group in Springfield, Va., wrote:

Did you see The Province of Vancouver’s cover? Lots of white space, which I know you are a fan of (me too), but I think it might be a little too much. I’m curious to know what you think of it.

Oh, I’m so glad you asked. Because I didn’t have time to make a sweep through the Newseum today. If not for your query, I’d have never seen this front page from the Province, average daily circulation 167,746.

(I put a drop shadow on it so you can tell where the edges are supposed to be):

My take? I like it as an editorial idea. Sweeping everything off the front except for one giant icon and headline strikes me as a great way to show support for your team, the day the opening ceremonies take place.

It’s a gimmick. But a very effective one, when done right.

The problem here is that this is not an editorial idea. This is an advertisement. For Air Canada.

Which explains the weird headline: Go far. As opposed to Go, team. Or Bring back the gold. Or Don’t break a leg getting on the ski lift.

I notice the Vancouver Sun — a 203,390-circulation broadsheet sister paper of the Province — didn’t post its front to the Newseum today. This, perhaps, might have been the reason:

That would appear to be a Spadea. Only print subscribers can see anything more than thumbnails of pages on the paper’s web site. But note how this seems to play with the tiny little page three I screencapped:

This, of course, is why I’ve been nervously documenting and editorializing here in the blog about the ads that have become increasingly intrusive in newspapers around the world.

Give ‘em an inch, and they’ll take two. Give ‘em two and they’ll take the entire front, except for your nameplate.

This might be a way to make a quick buck. But it is not the way to gain readers’ trust. Or to sell newspapers, for that matter.

What a way to end the week. Sigh…

So I immediately tipped off Krissi, thinking it might be a good idea to end with her reaction to this little bombshell. She writes:

Seriously? An advertisement? Can that really be the real, entire front page? And why would Newseum pick this as a Top Ten?

I was thoroughly confused by the page - all that white space and lack of anything else. Wow.

You’d think, since the Olympics are in Vancouver, that they’d want to do something more for the opening day …

Thanks for the explanation!

No, thank you, my eagle-eyed friend.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 4:23 pm and is filed under Industry woes, News design, Visual ethics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.