I thought this was a very different way to tell readers about the SND Awards: a full page that states:
After being awarded 10 international design awards for Gulf News, we decided to givce our designers a break.
SND awarded the Gulf News 10 Awards of Excellence in the following areas: Special Coverage, Special News Topics, News Design Pages, Feature Design Pages, Art & Illustration, Miscellaneous
I take great personal pride in the news about the Gulf News, having worked with the daily as a consultant for eight years. I have witnessed their growth. The Gulf News was the pioneer newspaper in introducing the concept of news design to the region. Today, Dubai and surroundings can boast of being one of the most exciting in the world in terms of making design prominent. The new newspapaper of the UAE, The National, designed by Lucie Lacava, received 22 awards from SND as well. What this means is that what we started at Gulf News has created the foundations for what is happening now. In addition, Business 24/7, the financial daily, received two awards, Al Bayan received one award, and Emarat Al Youm received two. Totral for the UAE , 37 SND awards. Readers in the UAE are a lucky group!
The Gulf News started as a 16-page black and white six-day tabloid on September 30, 1978, but much has happened since then, including the introduction of color, the establishment of an art department, headed by Art Director Miguel Angel Gomez, and, most recently, the total integration of the newsroom to create a model of how print/online should fuse in a world of 24/7 news cycles.
Gomez commented on the awards and the impact they have on his paper, and, specifically, his creative team:
Design, which includes illustrations, graphics and information is a key part of a newspaper. What sets a newspaper apart is the way it puts its content together and not just on how pretty a page looks. It is a complete experience. The awards this year for the various content packages rather than just individual pages is further evidence of this fact. We have been awarded for complete coverage such as the Al Nakba package, which comprises six pages plus cover, along with the Beijing Olympic Games and horse racing.”
We all know that the design of a newspaper is greatly influenced by how editors and journalists feel about presentation and packaging. At the Gulf News, its Editor Abdul Hamid, recognizes this point and grants design its attention and support;
We are well aware in our newsroom that content is the key, but that such content may be ignored or not grasped fully without effective packaging. To me, that is where design comes in. We begin each project here with the journalists and editors meeting face to face with the designers. The creative process is a team effort. When we plant the seed of how the story will develop, we are also contemplating how it will be presented visually. A win win situation for our newspaper and its readers.
Congratulations to the Gulf News team!
Requiem for the Rocky Mountain News
Thanks to my friend Jim McManus for sharing this moving column, by Rocky Mountain News journalist, Mike Littwin, who says farewell to his beloved newspaper. Here is an excerpt:
I know many businesses are closing, particularly these days. But newspapers don’t simply close. They die.
The world goes on without them, but it’s not the same world. Even if it were the same world, hundreds of thousands of readers couldn’t be sure because the paper wouldn’t be there on your doorstep (OK, sometimes near the doorstep) to let them know. And when a newspaper’s gone, there’s little enough to remember. We’re a daily. Journalism is, as they say, history written in a hurry, all the news fit to print until deadline comes. A newspaper isn’t meant to stand the test of time. It’s meant to be true to that day, that moment.
For the complete story:
http://tinyurl.com/dh5f82
Cutting through the visual clutter: Does your homepage pass the test?
Visual clutter happens most on high-content sites that lack organization in their design. It’s often overlooked or ignored and the result is a poor user experience, missed stories or information and a very short time on the web site. A visual segmentation test shows you exactly what’s wrong with the organization of your site and offers the opportunity to reorganize and create a design that keeps your users on your site longer and keeps them coming back. In this post, Mario describes the organization process and offers advice for avoiding clutter on your homepage. Here’s a sampling from the post:
A cursory look at most news sites and it becomes very obvious, regardless of how good the content, things are hard to find. Often, users don’t even know where to start. It’s as if everything has been dumped onto a page, crammed “above the scroll,” and left to the users to get their machetes out and make their way through the visual clutter. Users don’t want to have to work that hard. They’re too busy.
The tendency is to organize by subject matter or topic. And that works for building an information architecture or site map, but visually it’s better to organize by function. Nielsen’s advice works here—what are the main reasons users come to your site? For a news site the answers are normally to get news, to look for a job, to read columns, to share, to look at photos, to find out what’s going on for the weekend, etc. These are motivations more than categories and should be the basis for how the site should be organized visually.
For the rest of the article go here:
http://garciainteractive.com/blog/view/33/
:
To read TheRodrigoFino blog, in Spanish, go:
https://garciamedia.com/latinamerica/blog/
TheMarioBlog posting #206