Charles Apple

Here is the new logo for Emrooz, a newspaper based in Iran’s capital city of Tehran:

Do you see a dancing woman in the logo? Some do.

I’m not quite sure when Emrooz redesigned, but the page on the left, here, is reportedly from a year or two ago. The one on the right is a more recent front:

Radio Free Europe’s Golnaz Esfandiari reports this week:

Last month a hard-line weekly Partoye Sokhan accused Tehran Emrooz, which is reportedly close to Tehran’s mayor and Ahmadinejad rival Mohammad Bagher Qlibaf, of redesigning its logo to make it look like a dancing woman.

The weekly, which is close to the ultra hard-line Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, explained that the letter “r” in the logo looks like the leg of a dancing woman. It also said that other letters in the logo have been changed to look like arms and a head.

The weekly called on the Culture Ministry to warn the newspaper over its logo.

These folks are quite serious. Apparently, banners showing the logo have already been defaced:

Esfandiari reports:

The editor in chief of Tehran Emrooz, Rasul Babayi, said earlier this week that the paper will amend the logo “with a sense of sadness” in order to put an end to the controversy that it has caused.

But not before folks have had at least a little fun with it. Here, an editorial cartoonist depicts parents discovering their teenage son, um, enjoying the logo:

And another web site suggested a series of tweaks to the logo to, presumably, make it less sexy. Yeah, y’know, this might work:

And folks at this site seem to be having a nice laugh over the controversy. My favorite comment, submitted by a reader:

What are the words the “dancer” seems to be crapping?

Find the original Radio Free Europe report here. Find the humorous tweaks here. Find the cartoon here.

Here’s the first print newspaper redesign — that we’ve heard about, anyway — of the new year…

Here, a free weekly tabloid based in New Brunswick, Canada, launched a redesign Thursday.

A before-and-after look at the cover:

Design consultant Lucie Lacava writes:

The Lacava Design team worked on a full redesign and content rethink with editor Charles Mandel, transforming Here into a leading-edge urban alternative magazine. A redesign of the website will follow later this year.

A closer look at the cover:

Lucie also posted a number of inside prototype pages (click any of these for a closer look):

Find a gallery of old-format Here covers, um, here.

Express — the free youth-oriented tabloid published by the Washington Post, launched a redesign Monday, Ernie Smith tells us.

Ernie writes:

We’ve made a lot of changes to the overall look that emphasizes bold design in a way that the paper really didn’t before.

The covers, for example, are now in a magazine style, closer to Link, Red Eye, TBT and other publications – past and present – like us. Reflecting the newsy nature of the District, our cover stories will mainly focus on hard news over soft – so no entertainment, and probably not sports right away.

Here’s a closer look at the new front:

Ernie continues:

This is a huge change for us. Before, our covers were very templated – usually with a photo in the center and a rail that consistently styled. Now, we have a lot more wiggle room.

Interestingly, Monday’s redesign kicked off with an interesting promotional ad that wrapped around the edition. Below left is the day’s “front page,” that actually appeared on page — despite what the numbering said  (note a promo across the top to page “3″). Below right is the promo page.

Ernie continues:

Express‘ format is different from most other papers I’ve worked at in that section editors, not designers, do much of the basic layout. The layout style reflects this – heavily gridded, no bastard measures for most stories, infrequent use of reversed type, so on and so forth.

A before-and-after look at the national news page:

A closer look at the new national page:

Now is probably a good time to tell you that the pages Ernie sent us are missing the ads. Hence, the white spaces.

The font changes, according to Ernie:

Old News headlines: Knockout
New News headlines: Flama

Old Features headlines: Miller
New Features headlines: Farnham (which I like a ton better, BTW)

Old Decks/Body Type: Miller
New Decks/Body Type: Fenway (that’s right, we changed our body type)

Our “utility” font of sorts, the slab-serif, is Popular, which is still kinda new – we added it after a page shrinkage seven or eight months ago.

Here’s the new cover story page:

A before-and-after look at the sports page:

A closer look at the new sports page:

Again, Ernie:

When I was brought on in February, I was the first designer the paper had that focused strictly on the news section design (rather than entertainment or features). Much of the work I’ve done so far involves “punching up” smaller designs or helping with larger packages, with focus mostly on news and sports pages. The big change for me with the covers is that I’ll be designing a daily cover package which will allow for a bit more freedom in design approach than things we’ve done in the news sections in the past.

Other features to note: Our entertainment pages are now much more colorful, and we’ve introduced a new Web-centric page called “The Feed,” which presents cool stuff that we’ve found all over the web (much of it on our @ExpressFeed Twitter account).

We simplified overly complicated pages (EyeOpeners, specifically) and added extra layers to things that could use more dynamic approaches (our TV page).

We should probably note that the pages Ernie sent us are all missing the ads. As you can probably guess.

A closer look at the new Eye Openers page:

Ernie, again:

The redesign was handled in-house by art director Scott McCarthy, with input from everyone in the newsroom. He did great work.

A before-and-after look at the Lookout page, near the back of the paper:

A closer look at the new Lookout page:

Ernie concludes:

The bulk of the comments so far have been regarding the cut in comics, from six to two.

By the way, you can download PDFs of any edition of Express, any day, here.

The redesign launched last Wednesday.

On the left is a front from a few weeks ago. On the right is Wednesday’s debut front (Click on anything here today for a larger look):

Innovation editor George Frederick writes:

Goals
Cohesive: Typographically, we were all over the place.
Simple: We made it less confusing for the user.
Sturdy: We made it more difficult to design a bad page.
Responsible: We made sure to do right by our loyal readership.
Attractive: Obviously.

A closer look at the new page one. This one is from Thursday:

George writes:

Typography
All of our new fonts were created my Mario Feliciano (Feliciano Type Foundry). We use the Flama family (sans serif), Mayeur family (serif) and the Morgan Avec family (slab serif for section flags and labeling).

The design of the faces is strong. Each is contemporary without being trendy. Each is versatile. And the three unrelated families are united by Feliciano’s considerable eye for form and space.

A before-and-after look at the Sunday front:

George continues:

Process
The launch of the redesign is a sweet conclusion to an arduous year. In February, we the installment of a new front end system (JazBox). That meant completely recreating our old  design in a new system — font conversion, licensing, scripts, training, learning, erring, fixing, training — the whole routine.

Beginning in late July, we went through every step of that process again to launch a redesign as part of our web reduction project.

We launched on Wednesday, Nov. 18. We’re all exhausted.

People
Myself, along with staff designers Mark Voger and Shawn Weston and freelancers Sharon Russell and Linda Coleman.

Mario Feliciano is the type designer.

Freelancer Jean Tuttle designed our logos and icons.

Jon Winters, owner of Electronic Publishing Support and script builder extraordinaire, was a key factor in making the interface powerful, efficient, and user-friendly.

The quality and dedication of this small crew, along with the support of Star-Ledger Editor Kevin Whitmer and his predecessor Jim Willse, made it possible to complete this big job in a small window.

Here’s a daily entertainment front from last Thursday, Day Two of the new design:

Here’s the first Sunday entertainment front, from yesterday:

George concludes:

Reader response
It’s a hit. Phone calls and emails are overwhelmingly positive (strange for a redesign). We are considered to more legible, fun and current. I’ll take em all.

Next
Sleep. Then some design tweaking.

The European edition of the Wall Street Journal-Europe launched a redesign Tuesday.

A before-and-after of page one. On the left is a front from August. On the right is Tuesday’s front:

A story in the WSJ itself cited a number of changes in the remade edition. Among those features:

• A number of new regular columnists and features.
• A daily “big read” in-depth feature.
• A renamed Money and Investing section called “Business and Finance” containing analysis and statistics.
• A new features section called “C-Suite.”
• A new daily sports section.
• “Journal Reports,” a series of eight-page special sections on specific topics.

A closer look at the new page one:

Founded in 1983, WSJ-Europe circulates about 88,000 copies daily in 50 countries.

Find the Journal’s story here.