Checklist for redesigns
The following is a checklist that we have used in some 75 redesigns. Even if you are not looking for a full relaunch it is advisable to take a health check of your publication every so often and ask how it fares in each category.
Target market
All redesigns start with this. Why are you doing it? What do you hope to achieve? A redesign should attract potential readers and to do that you must know who they are - and what their interests are. If you were designing a magazine for ABC males it would look different to a magazine for five-year-olds. Designers need to know who they are chasing.
Titlepiece
Don't change it on a whim. It is your brand. It can be expensive to change too - the side of the vans, the point of sale material, the letterheads, the livery on the side of the building. That said, too many titlepieces are of their time ... designed in the 80s and 90s.
Slogan
They can be touch a nerve with the readership but can also clutter the titlepiece. Be more creative than "at the heart of the community" or "serving the community."
Logo
Is there a symbol that represents the community you are trying to reach? Don't just opt for a famous landmark and don't strain to create a logo if there is not one that works.
Blurbs
The sole purpose of the promotional panel is to sell the paper; to persuade potential readers (not existing readers) to break their habit and buy a copy. The first rule is to tease the reader with clever words and compelling images. Don't waste space with dead words such as plus, also, today or with the number of pages you are publishing.
Typography
Is it readable? Is it disciplined? Is it modern? Serif or sans? We have so many typefaces to choose from today so it is more important that ever that the designer understands the characteristics of the founts. Having chosen the right faces, ask why and when you would use caps, underscores and ragged setting. Everything in design should be there for a reason.
Colour
Colour can change the market position of a newspaper more than anything else. In the hands of an idiot the colour palette can be a dangerous tool. What is the brand colour, how many other colours will be in your palette, which colours work together and which don't? Will you have a policy that embraces advertising, promotions and editorial? Does everyone understand the disciplines, the role of blending and contrasting, hot and cold colours? The redesign is an opportunity to introduce a company-wide colour policy.
Shape
Since the 1980s most newspapers have been modular. Even the Sun is modular with twists. Do your layout artists understand why. Do they know where the entry points of the page are and how to guide a readers to all of the corners?
Structure
How will you pace as people pick their way through your publication?. Some editors choose to have news at the beginning, then comment and into features with classified forming a bridge to sport. Others take a left-right approach. Some choose supplements and pullouts, others prefer everything to be in the main jacket. Whatever you choose, don't make it one-paced.
Entry points
The day of the crosshead may be almost at an end (there are, after all, more compelling ways of breaking up text than with a single word) but readers more than ever need relief from grey legs of text. The redesign offers an opportunity to give the reader more than one way to enter the copy through factfiles, pullquotes, dropped caps, captions, pictures and many other devices.
Signposting
The reader should be guide simply and clearly around the paper - able to find the content of interest without difficulty. There are many ways to do this. The section headers and folios should be clear and look like they belong to the same stable. Too often advertising and sport go their own way. An index is only of any use if it is comprehensive - and why would you want to put it on Page 1?
Artwork
Stylish artwork can make the paper look clean and authoritative. Clipart can make it look cheap. The artwork should reflect the brand and belong to the same stable. Watch out for rounded corners, WOBs and shadows. Investing in a good set of logos can be money well sent.
Pictures
Improving the use of pictures - the cropping, the cutouts, the scaling, the relationship with other images - is one of the easiest ways of making a publication look better. Good pictures do not happen by osmosis. Involve the photographers in the redesign and explain what is needed.
Captions
They should go under pictures because that is where readers expect to find them. They should contrastwith the body copy so as to avoid confusion. They should be legible. And they should act as entry points, persuading readers to enter the text. One-word captions, bald names and repetition of the headline will make poor captions.
Graphics
Too few regional newspaper use information graphics. Graphics start with the journalists. If they think graphics, gather the graphics information for their stories and push for more graphics in the paper... the results can be stunning. You don't need artistic talent such as Nigel Holmes or Alan Gilliland to make the paper sing. With the right culture and a little training, subs can produce powerful graphics.
Headlines
Too many regional newspapers have been infected by two-deck syndrome. They draw shapes and make the words fit, which is completely the long way around. There are many guidelines that govern good headline writing but the main three are; be interesting; use words that build pictures in the readers minds and write the headlines first. It is surprising how few subs do.
Column widths
Too wide and copy can be intimidating. Too narrow and the bad line breaks and forced text look ridiculous. Why then do good designers insist on putting one word per column as they run the text around cutouts?
Bylines
They give the paper personality and accessibility but rarely do we want to draw attention to them over and above the headline or picture. Clean, wide open type is needed. There should no longer be paper in the land that does not give the reporter's e-mail address.
Rules and borders
The age of the big black rule is thankfully over. There used to be a time when people believed ink sold newspapers so 12pt underscores and borders were the order of the day. Now everyone has woken up to the fact that it is the message - the words and pictures - and not the ink that sells. Well, almost everyone.
Advertising
It is part of the paper too and should reflect the tone and strategy of the title. Classified should look like it belongs to the rest of the paper. Clipart should not be the first resort. Design skills are too often lacking in local and regional newspaper advertising departments. Help with colour type and the principles of advertising layout can help improve the appearance and the response.
White space
People need white space to read. A good designer will give the paper natural white through the typography, gutter widths, artwork and signposting. The key to white space is symmetry.
Detail
The difference between the good, the bad and the ugly is often down to the detail. Get the spacing right, level your headlines, make them fit, work to a baseline grid, get the balance and scaling right. It really does make a big difference.
