The Mario Blog

07.13.2009—2am    Post #669
New look for India’s Hindustantimes

TAKEAWAY: This week, one of India’s largest circulations dailies, Hindustantimes, of Delhi, launched its new look. We show you pages and give you details of this Garcia Media project. ALSO: Pure Design installment ready to download

TAKEAWAY: This week, one of India’s largest circulations dailies, Hindustantimes, of Delhi, launched its new look. We show you pages and give you details of this Garcia Media project. ALSO: Pure Design installment ready to download

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Sunday’s front page, inside commentary page

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Comment/editorial pages

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Front page of HT City, the daily entertainment supplement

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The very important Classified section front, and the opening of Matrimonials, one of the most popular sections in the newspaper

It was over a year in the makings, but the total rethinking of Delhi’s Hindustantimes was launched this week. So far, readers are happy, perhaps too happy, if such a thing can exist, according to Creative Director, Anup Gupta, with whom we had the pleasure of sharing creative responsibilities as we brought this well respected Indian daily into its new phase: catering to younger readers, maintaining the loyal ones, and also creating a newspaper that is right for the 24/7 news cycles of today, and which redefines news as it publishes through various platforms.

It is important to note that the new formula for the Hindustantimes includes a slightly different type of newspaper for Saturday and Sunday, with two entirely different feature offerings in do! and think!.

Rajiv Verma, CEO of the Hindustantimes, who was quite involved in every step of our project, gave us very clear guidelines: “We want to make a very good newspaper even better; we want to aim at the reader who wants substance, but who has little time, and who is often connected to the digital media.”

We analyzed everything, from story structures (redifining everything from briefs to investigative reports), to special supplements, with special emphasis on the HT City daily entertainment guide (a mix of celebrity news, Bollywood gossip, plus lifestyle features), creating a color code by sections, and even introducing two new typographic fonts: Vonnes (a sans) and Benton Modern Display and Benton Modern Text ,all from the Fonbureau.

In addition to Creative Director Anup Gupta, and Hindustantimes Ashutosh Sapru, the Garcia Media team included our Hamburg art director, Jan Kny.

Link to see all pages online

http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/default.aspx

What is relevant news?

At the Michael Jackson Memorial in Los Angeles (July 8, 2009), one thing was obvious: it was the event that people could not get enough of, not just during the live service, viewed by millions around the globe, but also in the days leading to and for at least two days following it. The wars in Irak and Afghanistan, and the post electoral protests in Iran, took

The New York Times carried a “room for debate” item asking: What’s Driving the Michael Jackson Mania? (July 7, 2009).

But it was Brian Williams, of NBC, who put it in a better perspective, and one we agree with and have been suggesting in this blog for months, concerning the relevancy of news: Williams, who sat on a special platform outside the Staples Center, told his colleague Lester Holt that the public had a way of deciding for itself what matters, “despite, at some times, the news media’s better wishes.” He added , “And this is an event because it is.”

Right on. The new definition of news clearly stated. Or is it new? Didn’t the public always suggest to us what they thought was news?

Only now, we can’t afford to ignore them.

Al Trivino in new position at News International

Alfredo Triviño, one of our former Poynter Institute for Media Studies students, and now with News Corp, in London, has been appointed News
International Director of Creative Projects. This new position will involve the creation and development of new products, new media, and new brands associated with Murdoch’s media world.

Triviño is currently involved with new proposals for the digital edition of The Sunday Times and The Times, of London. A new for-pay model of The Times’ edition should go live this fall, according to Triviño.

Congratulations, Al!

Pure Design: summaries

Summaries continue to be the scanner’s best friend! The headline helps to grab our “initial” attention, but it is the well written, meaty summary that does the rest—-hooking us, seducing us, and making us want to know more. But, if not, we can proceed on to the next page with some “basic knowledge” of a story’s content. I cannot imagine a more important scanning tool in our bag.

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