Charles Apple

Today marked the launch of the long-awaited, much-anticipated redesign of the Chicago Tribune.

It’s on the streets. But not in the Newseum, unfortunately — as of 11 a.m. Eastern time, anyway. So here’s the best look we can get of today’s debut front:

Here’s a before-and-after look:

Our friends over at SND/Update have posted an extensive slideshow of the first edition and a video of travel-weary Weather Channel hurricane chaser Jim Cantore walking us through the project:

Oh, wait; our mistake. That’s the Tribune’s Steve Cavendish. Even better, then! Find it all here.

Poynter’s Sara Quinn posted an interview with Tribune design director Jonathon Berlin about the redesign. And, of course, we previewed the redesign last week. Find that here.

SportsDesigner has PDFs of a special wrap-around section commemorating success Sunday by the Bears and the White Sox. Find all that here.

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UPDATE

Whatever else you do today, do not miss the video our buddy Robb Montgomery shot today of readers’ reaction to the new Tribune:

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Meanwhile, The Oklahoman of Oklahoma City also launched a major redesign today, reducing its width a 44-inch web:

The obligatory before-and-after:

This was a Maria Garcia company redesign. He’s posted a number of before-and-after examples in his blog.

Read more about the redesign on the Oklahoman’s extensive online users guide:

Poynter’s centerpiece story at the moment is the redesign of these two papers plus the Hartford Courant, which launched Sunday. Find Sara Quinn’s story here.

Also, Chicago-based design consultant Ron Reason gives his thoughts about the new-and-improved Tribune in his blog today.

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Melanie Shaffer, design director of the Hartford Courant, sent us a big batch of PDFs this afternoon of her paper’s new redesign.

She writes:

It’s been a wild week. I don’t think anyone can be fully prepared to launch a redesign in just about 14 weeks.

We had a great centerpiece all set to go for the launch, then Paul Newman passed away. He’s a long-time Connecticut resident so we new we had to do it right. We had also known he was ill, so we were prepared for his passing, however that was in the old design style.

I had two designers working exclusively on this redesign with me, Chris Moore, my deputy design director and Tim Reck, my lead features designer who is a stickler for details. None of this would have happened if these two hadn’t worked their tails off.

The rest of my teeny staff of graphic artists and designers (nine in all, including me) took on the extra work and plowed through the daily grind all summer long.

Melanie Shaffer in a local Fox News TV report on Friday.
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Oh, and thanks for the dorky quote off the TV spot. The pressure of the video camera turned me into a bumbling idiot.

Ah, I don’t think Mel looked like a bumbling idiot at all! I’ve been on TV before and it is indeed unnerving.

I’m quite pleased with the redesign, though. I was awfully worried about this one. Like many of us, I’ve long been a fan of the cleanly-designed Hartford Courant. I didn’t want to see that spoiled.

And it wasn’t spoiled. The new design is punchier, but still very clean; very classy.

We posted it this morning. But here, again, is the new page one:

Melanie wrote a bit about the new nameplate:

When our staff and newshole reductions were announced in June, we knew that the content that couldn’t continue on in print had to move online. We also knew there needed to be a cycle of the newspaper feeding the web and the web feeding the newspaper. Topics start in the paper, they move online for the public to comment, then that conversation moves back into print.

With that thinking, my objectives were to blend Hartford Courant and courant.com in the masthead.

We wanted to be unique and clever in this design. We always had the dot at the end of the our masthead. We used that dot to add the dot-com. Many, many many variations of working that into the masthead exist. This vertical masthead retained the traditional script of the Hartford Courant, which was very important to me, and blended it with both the .com message and the new font we brought into this redesign.

We turned the corner, if you will. This masthead was literally worked to death with details up until last Tuesday.

I think the vertical masthead puts more emphasis on the design, especially the centerpiece package. We are also bringing illustration onto the front page for the first time. Traditionally, we have only used graphics and photography. We have always been a paper with an artistic bent and will continue to honor our strong photojournalism. With this redesign, I wanted to incorporate illustration into the options in a smart, sophisticated edgy way. You’ll see some of that in the coming days/weeks.

This new masthead moves us out of the traditional newspaper approach of lede-story. Newspapers haven’t been breaking news vehicles for a few years now. We’ve been second-day focused, but haven’t released ourselves from the tradition of the strong right-hand lede.

Going forward, we are focusing on the best news story of the day as both the lede and the centerpiece. We’ve shifted our lede A1 designer to an earlier start to plan and work the visuals. Of course, if important breaking news happens on our news cycle, it will still be featured prominently on our front page.

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Sports remains a freestanding section. The daily sports section will have classifieds folded into the back:

A closer look:

Melanie writes:

With the .com objective on the front page, we had to continue that onto the inside section fronts and also create simpler navigation for our readers. Our web refers take our readers all over the place with unique redirects. Now, each section front has courant.com worked into the page banners. So for stories within that section, a reader can go online using the section’s redirect and find those stories on that splash page (courant.com/CTLiving for instance). Our Deputy Online Editor worked out the details of renaming the online sections to better mirror the paper’s sections.

We also started something called ReaderSpeak. These reader quotes are featured prominently in the banners of the sections and throughout the paper. We are bringing the conversation from online back into print. Readers can comment on a story today and have their timely comment featured in print the next day.

Our research shows that more than 50% of our print readers are also online.

My managing editor, Bobbie Roessner, also thought it was important to incorporate our strong Connecticut focus into the naming of sections. That is why you’ll see a CT in front of each section. We are still Connecticut’s largest news gathering organization. This naming was also mirrored online.

The daily edition folds Connecticut news and business news into the front of the A section followed by a new Nation/World spread and then the old editorial pages, now renamed CTOpinion.

Local, biz and editorial remain freestanding in the Sunday paper. Mel writes:

We took all our newshole reduction out of the daily so we could maintain the Sunday paper. Research suggests our readers spend upwards of 4 hours on the Sunday paper. That time commitment is considerably less during the week.

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The Sunday Connecticut section is now CTWeek:

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Sunday Consumer is now CTConsumer:

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The Sunday Commentary section is now CTOpinion:

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The Sunday Arts section is now called CTArts. Mel writes:

Yeah, we know it reads c-tarts without the color distinction.

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Mel says the CTLiving section is a freestanding section seven days a week…

…though with considerably fewer pages and with obits and the weather page at the end of the section.

The Sunday travel page — formerly called Journeys — is now the Sunday CTLiving page:

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Melanie writes:

The Home & Real Estate name stays the same, though our Friday broadsheet section is called CTHome:

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And there you have it: The new Hartford Courant.

Many thanks to Melanie for taking the time to show us around!

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As we posted earlier today, the Hartford Courant launched its redesign this morning.

Coming Monday: The Chicago Tribune, of which we posted a preview last week.

Also coming Monday: The Oklahoman of Oklahoma City, which is a Garcia Media project.

Also Monday: The Hagerstown, Md., Herald-Mail. is cutting down to a 44-inch web width. Editor John League says the reduction is accompanied by a redesign.

We’re trying for before-and-after samples. Stay tuned.

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As promised, the Hartford Courant launched its redesign today. A look at the new Page One:

A larger view of Sunday’s front:

Sorry, that’s all we have. No section fronts, no inside pages.

Find our Friday post about this redesign here.

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UPDATE

The Courant has posted, on its web site, an AP story about its redesign.

The story consists of just six sentences. But it’s accompanied by ten Google ads!

Seriously. Check it out for yourself here.

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The Chicago Tribune redesign launches Monday. Read more about that here.

These are just two of the latest papers in the Tribune chain to redesign. The entire Tribune company redesign calendar:

Sunday, June 22: Orlando Sentinel

Monday, July 28: Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call

Monday, Aug. 11: Chicago RedEye

Sunday, August 17: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Sunday, Aug. 24: Baltimore Sun

Today: Hartford Courant

Monday: Chicago Tribune,

No dates available:

Los Angeles Times, AM NewYork, Newport News (Va.) Daily Press

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The Daily Mail of London reports on the front cover of the new issue of Nature magazine:

The world’s leading scientific journal has featured a powerful image of John McCain and Barack Obama on its front cover. The pair radiate statesmanlike-authority, the image is suitably sombre for the weighty interview inside.

Then, however, you see the back cover.

Yep. That’s pretty bad.

The Daily Mail reports:

The journal swears it is horrified by the coincidence.

“We didn’t know until the issue landed on our desks,” Nature pleaded to the media. “It just goes to show that editorial and advertising aren’t working in cahoots.”

Find the Daily Mail story here.

We’ve posted about other unfortunate ad juxtapositions here and here.

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The Hartford Courant gave an exclusive sneak-peek of its much-anticipated redesign this morning to  its local Fox News affiliate, Fox 61. The redesign launches Sunday, one day before the redesign of its corporate parent paper, the Chicago Tribune.

A video capture of the new front page shows it is indeed a radical change for what has traditionally been one of the world’s best-designed papers:

Yep: That’s a sideways nameplate you’re seeing. TV reporter Logan Byrnes breathlessly announces in his video report:

This has never been done before in any newspaper in the United States!

Earlier this week, Romenesko posted a memo from Hartford Courant editor Cliff Teutsch to his staff in which he explained the new nameplate:

We decided on a vertical masthead which will give our front page a dramatic new look signaling the changes to be found in the rest of the paper. By retaining our name in the historic script, we honor our tradition. By adding a dot com, we reinforce that we are a unified print and online news organization. Now, in addition to proclaiming that we are the oldest continuously published newspaper in the country, we’re adding a second bragging line: “read by 800,000 Connecticut residents every week in print and online.”

The video report doesn’t really give a clear view of the entire page one prototype. In addition, that’s pretty much the only page the local Fox affiliate showed.

The screen cap above is the best I could pull. Here’s one that shows the bottom of that same page:

Teutsch also mentioned 40 new columns and features in the soon-to-be new-and-improved Courant and a teaser marketing campaign running in the paper and on a billboard on the Courant building.

Courant design director Melanie Shaffer in the TV report.
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In the TV story, Courant design director Melanie Shaffer mentions the new “punctuation front” will be Rockwell. “It really bolds up the design,” she says.

Read the entire Teutch memo here. Watch the video report here.

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