Charles Apple

David Montesino, assistant managing editor for visuals at the Tacoma, Wash., News Tribune — circulation 90,546 — tells us:

This redesign was part of our 44-inch web conversion. Since we were headed that way we felt we could update our typography a bit.

This is not a major redesign. It started out that way but as we got underway we heard from our readers about how much change we had already imposed on them. So we pulled back and decided to do more of a typographical update.

The changes kicked in this past Monday. On the left is last Wednesday’s front page. On the right is yesterday’s front:

David adds:

We kept our body copy (Concorde BE) but changed our serif (from Whitman to Rocky) and sans serif (from Agenda to Titling Gothic FB) fonts.

The changes were made in-house, David says. Here’s a closer look at the new front:

The changes also affected Tacoma’s sister paper, the Olympian of Olympia, Wash., circulation 30,755.

On the left is Friday’s front. On the right is yesterday’s:

David also sent us a couple of features pages. On the left is a front from last December. On the right is Wednesday’s features front:

And here is the weekly entertainment tab. On the left is the current issue that inserted last Friday. On the right is tomorrow’s Go cover:

This is the point where I’d normally quote from the paper’s own story about the redesign and cite a bullet list of the changes. That’s hardly necessary this time — Like David says, the papers kept the changes to a minimum. Executive editor Karen Peterson wrote Sunday:

Frankly, we think we’ve put you through enough changes in the past two years with the consolidation of sections and changes in features.

Readers I talk to and those who call our reader representative for the most part say they’ve had enough change. We are changing only what we must Monday to accommodate the narrower page.

Other than the narrower page width, Karen ordered a change in the crossword puzzle. She writes:

When we first met with our Reader Panel in March, panelist Jen Hermann championed the cause of readers who were insisting we put the United Features puzzle back on the Take Time page. She came bearing a newspaper page she had cut and pasted back together showing us exactly what she wanted.

Thanks to Jen and the others, both puzzles will appear on Take Time beginning Monday. It made sense to put puzzles on the heavier pullout page that’s easier to write on and easier to take to work and do at lunchtime. We’ll also put the horoscope back on that page. To make room, we’re moving the TV grid into the Classifieds section.

Find Karen’s column here.

The Connecticut Post of Bridgeport — circulation 76,014 — launched a redesign today.

On the left is Tuesday’s front. On the right is today’s:

Design edtior Lee Steele tells us:

The fonts are Zocalo and Amplitude from Font Bureau.

We were given a boost from our consultant Frank Mina, the ame/presentation at the San Francisco Chronicle. We wanted to do a better job integrating our columnists, consumer pieces and old-fashioned local news. Also, our navigation was a big priority.

We also wanted to send a message that we’re new and that we represent today’s world. We tossed out anything that seemed traditional. Up until now, we’ve always held on to something that communicated our long heritage and sense of being an institution.

A closer look at the new front reveals one of the best things about today’s relaunch:

And that’s compelling news. Forget all the house ads and the reader’s guides and the introductory columns from your editor. The very best way to knock a reader’s socks off with a redesigned newspaper is to have a huge story that gets folks talking. The Post did that today with the huge profile of the accused Times Square bomber. Which is a local story for the Post.

Read the story by Kate Ramunni – and see all the documents — here.

Lee posts in his blog today:

We’re a local paper. We consider that our strength. So how does our nation/world presentation figure in? We’ve broken away from a conventional layout. Frank Mina of the San Francisco Chronicle came up with this:

Aha. I’ve not seen one of those since the old pink-flamingo days of the Boca Raton News. Very interesting.

Other features of the new design, according to a story in today’s paper:

• Larger body copy.
• Ganging local stories onto a “second local front” on page A5.
• More local maps.
• More quotes from local folks on the opinion page.
• A new investigative reporting team.
• A consumer complaint column.

Find the Post’s story about its redesign here. Find Lee Steele’s blog here.

City Press — South Africa’s third-largest paper with an estimated circulation of 2.5 million — is launching a major redesign Sunday. The English-language weekly is based in Johannesburg.

A before-and-after of the front page:

A closer look at Sunday’s front:

Here is the sports front, before and after:

The business front…

…and the Voices front, which is the commentary/editorial section:

Over the past couple of weeks, City Press ran an interesting series of promotional ads leading up to the relaunch:

And, of course, City Press did some cool stuff in-house this week, as well, handing out coffee…

…and cupcakes.

The redesign was the brainchild of Australian-based design consultant Peter Ong. Here, Peter looks over advance pages:

Peter also redesigned the national Afrikaans-language Sunday paper, Rapport, last October. I was a part of that venture. Read all about it here.

Find Peter Ong’s web page here. Find City Press‘ home page here.

Many thanks to my good friend Arlene Prinsloo for sending me the pages and the pictures.