The Mario Blog

10.31.2011—9am    Post #1282
Monday musings and some Halloween fun with Bild

TAKEAWAY: Happy Halloween to all. Our Monday musings include assorted items of interest from here and there. PLUS: Bild’s pop up gets spooky

TAKEAWAY: Happy Halloween to all. Our Monday musings include assorted items of interest from here and there. PLUS: Bild’s pop up gets spooky

Spooky covers from the New Yorker

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It is the perfect day to take a retrospective look at those wonderful Halloween covers from the legendary The New Yorker magazine, dating to 1942. Bob Newman, that most talented of magazine designers, and presently Creative Director at Reader’s Digest, has assembled the ultimate Halloween treat for us.

Go take a look here:

Halloween Covers from The New Yorker
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.461327420848.244723.199718485848&type=3

A page we like

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The editor of Dubai’s Gulf News, Abdul Hamid Ahmad, proudly sends us the front page of the Sunday newspaper. We like it too, the story in numbers. In this case, the new figure when it comes to counting how many of us there are in the world today: more than 7 billion.

Readers are always fascinated by numbers, and, in this case, the lead story used that great tool in its headline. I like the movement at the end. Just figure the things you could do to create a pop up witht the same concept in the tablet edition.

Where those ads are in news websites

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Here is one of several great illustrations of the dominance of ads in news websites (image from Proof by Mask)

Here is a thorough, well illustrated piece that I recommend and that I know you will enjoy reading, with illustrations that say it all. If you feel that advertising is perhaps dominating too prominently on news websites, the author makes his argument for it well.

http://www.mondaynote.com/2011/10/30/proof-by-mask/

Highlight: The graphic evolution of the web must deal with two negative forces: its language framework doesn’t evolve fast enough, and it faces the burden of messy advertising.

My take: Somehow, I am not at all offended by any of the illustrations presented here, some of which are obviously very much advertising driven. I believe that, with economic conditions being what they are, we are likely to see a more enhanced “marriage” of advertising and editorial content on news websites. It is up to those website designers to make ads and editorial content not just coexist on the same page, but to weave it in such a way—from the grid used to the contrast provided—-that the overall effect will be a positive one.

Today’s pop up

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It is the Halloween special for the Bild app in Germany. Frank Deville sends us this pop up where users can flip through a collection of celebrities and the costumes they have picked to spook the world tonight.

Our pick: Model Heidi Klum found another way to show her spectacular body through her costume. Take a peek.

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