Updated Sunday, Sept. 13, 2009
TAKEAWAY: Who says the compact format is the ultimate preferred page size for all newspaper readers? While the impact of the compact is something to be taken seriously, we now know that a segment of the reading public still longs to run away with a good old broadsheet in their hands.
Jacky was late making his Sunday picks today. Actually, I was travelling this Sunday with Jacky as well as his owner, Frank Deville, from Dusseldorf to Aachen to see Maurice Deville play football (soccer) with his team, Alemannia. As it happens, there was traffic congestion along the route, as a bridge was being totally repaired. The short trip turned into a two-hour wait and move kind of experience. Jacky behaved well. He had made his picks early, but we are now late posting them.
Jacky picked a wonderful two-page graphic, typical of the Bild am Sonntag, with the headline: The Wound Heals Slowly. It is about Ground Zero, and the rebuilding of the area, and the eventual rising of the new buildings to replace the World Trace Center.
A second story, also very typical of Bild am Sonntag, is a medical story with a combination of photo and info graphics. Well done!
Who is Jacky?
Jacky belongs to Frank Deville. The Luxembourg-based pooch is an “avid reader” of the German newspaper, Bild Am Sonntag. Every Sunday Jacky picks stories and interesting graphics in Bild Am Sonntag , the German newspaper.
Bild’s Munich experience
Rolf Hauschild, head of Bild’s Munich operations, holds a copy of the day’s Bild Zeitung in its two formats—-compact and broadsheet. In Munich, readers of the colorful daily have a choice. For the thieves, it’s the broadsheet, hands down.
While the discussion of compacts versus broadsheets continues, I have just heard a fascinating story about the preferences of some members of our audience when it comes to newspaper formats.
No, this information did not come to me via focus groups, where the answer is usually: give us a compact.
In fact, it was during a casual conversation last night in Berlin and I knew that I had to share it with you. As some of you may know, Germany’s Bild Zeitung, that most popular of newspapers, over 12 million daily readers (3 million plus paid circulation), has started publishing a “tabloid” version, along with its regular broadsheet, in Munich. It is supposed to be an experiment, and so far I understand that it has been quite successful.
What is interesting, however, is that Bild had previously experienced a high level of newspapers stolen from the vending machines throughout the city. Ever since the tabloids replaced the broadsheets, the number of copies stolen has gone down considerably.
Good news, and good information to have. Coincidentally, in 1959 former Berlin resident, Billy Wilder ,directed one of Hollywood’s most memorable musical comedies “Some Like it Hot” (Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe). Today we could probably consider a comedy titled “Some Like Their Broadsheets”
Is that really a newspaper you are carrying?
And now the “newspaper pouch” to carry your laptop and fool those computer thieves out there. Is the name of La Vanguardia misspelled here, or was this on purpose?
While discussing thieves: Being creative with a newspaper may go beyond the boundaries of the newsrooms these days.
A Spanish firm has devised a computer-carrying bag that is meant to deter thieves from taking your laptop computer when you least expect it.
When the laptop is wrapped in the pouch, the computer resembles the front page of the newspaper—-a real cover up using the front page of a well known European newspaper. Chosen for the honor are Spain’s El Pais and La Vanguardia, of course; also, Germany’s Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung, or Italy’s La Gazzetta dello Sport, for example. Designed for Apple’s Mac-Book Pro, the pouches cost $85, and are made of a plastic fabric.
The creators, at a company called the Mitemite Unnecessary Objects Lab in Barcelona, call their bags “urban camouflage.” They say that the company “specializes in creating products which will spread a few more chuckles in a somewhat mundane reality.”
To think that they used to refer to newspapers as fish wrappers at one point in their history. Times have, indeed, changed.
How US bankrupt newspapers are coping:
This is a good update of the various US newspaper companies facing financial distress. For those who follow The Philadelphia Inquirer’s story, the coming week should be an important one: Publisher Brian Tierney is fighting off a bid by creditors, who are owed $300m, to take over the group. He wants to give them some $67m in cash and property to settle the debt. Lots of suspense here as to what the creditors will decide, and the sustainability of Brian’s role. Now it’s up to a judge to decide next week on ground rules for an auction between the two sides.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/sep/11/us-press-publishing-downturn
The Impact of the Compact
Pure Design: Download entire section: Type
Download entire first section of Pure Design: Words
Now that I have fully presented the first of six sections of Pure Design on TheMarioBlog, I am offering the entire initial section, “Words,” available for download—all 33 pages of it. This may be useful for those of you saving or printing out Pure Design and will be done following each of the remaining sections. At the end of our journey through words, type, layout, color, pictures, and process, I will publish the entirety of Pure Design in one file.
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TheMarioBlog posting #363