Sometimes communication processes are inevitable. While broadband expands, wireless connections become the standard, our ability to store digital information grows wildly and the possibilities for us to exchange information get better by the second. So is the way the various media restructure themselves to keep up with the pace.
The traditional media see themselves forced to establish new forms of contact with their audiences, in the midst of an unparalleled global dynamic. This raises the question: can those of us who work in print continue to design, edit and distribute newspapers the same way we did 10 years ago? Today’s readers are not only the best informed, but they also refuse to sit passively, choosing, instead, to be part of participatory journalism, where ordinary citizens partake of the ‘reporting” of the news, using their mobile phones and digital cameras, to report what they see and hear.
It is in the midst of this media panorama of the early 21st century that the newspapers that comprise Grupo Reforma in Mexico: Reforma (Mexico City), El Norte (Monterrey) and Mural (Guadalajara) introduce a new design this week. But more than just a new aesthetic transformation, the three newspapers followed a meticulous 21-month process to rethink themselves totally, to become a part of a multi-platform environment, amplifying the definition of news. While stating firmly that print is here to stay, the three newspapers have also rethought all processes dealing with navigation, color use, and the methodology of making a reader’s journey thru each page faster and more meaningful.
Obviously, just making cosmetic changes, such as a change of typographic fonts, is relatively easy. And it does not require much audacity to alter the page architecture, devise a new color palette and make the headlines bolder or bigger. However, it is a more thorough and dynamic process to rethink the journalistic styles followed, how news is chosen and presented. At Grupo Reforma, this was the centerpiece of the project: working with journalists and designers at every phase of the project, we at Garcia Media conducted individual workshops where specific sections of the newspaper were discussed, analyzed, then approached differently, with the journalists who had created the original pages “redoing them” following new, improved formulas.
The result that readers will be able to evalute this week when Reforma, El Norte and Mural appear with their new visual and journalistic formulas is the best testimony we can offer to the fact that in today’s fast changing media environment it is “rethinking” and not “redesigning” that fits the description of what we do.
For the readers, a win win situation; for the editors and designers, a new way of applying their craft.