We at Garcia Media have been involved as consultants with Panama’s La Prensa for a decade, which coincides with the ten most evolutionary and dramatic years for the media globally in terms of change and transformation.

What was a redesign project ten years ago, involving the usual design elements of typography, color, grids and the overall look of the product, now turns into a true transformational exercise to practice the journalism of the digital age, complete with a vision that allows for presentation of content across platforms, and, more importantly, responding to the specific needs of each platform and how the audience consumes information in them.

Not only are we letting stories flow continuously, with updates on mobile devices as the news breaks, but we also emphasize different contents and story creations for different platforms.

It has been this thinking that has prevailed as we embarked on the latest La Prensa project.

The project

The executive and editorial teams of La Prensa wanted us to help them develop a strategic evolution of its printed products, which also include magazines, to the first digital stage, which we did successfully. For this new phase of the project, which began in 2017 and lasted 10 months, the emphasis was on multimedia publishing. Again, this was an all encompassing project that went beyond the design of the products, and took the entire newsroom team into workshops and seminars to learn the specifics of multimedia storytelling.

Phases of the new project

Here are the most important points that guided our La Prensa project:

• Creation of new strategies for social media content.

• Development of the brand as it would carry to the digital platforms.
• Development of workshops to teach the team the concept of linear visual storytelling.

• Adjustment in the format of the printed edition for Monday-Friday.
• Switching the weekend print edition from broadsheet to tabloid.
• New work flows to allow for a multimedia, digital first approach.

Promoting content across platforms

An important part of our project was to create the visual palette to promote stories for different content across the various platforms. From doing breaking news push notifications, to the promoting of feature content on social media.

Now that La Prensa works through an ecosystem of platforms, we had to prepare the team to promote stories through various formats, including such visual assets as photos, videos, audio.

What the news means

Sometimes the complexity of the news requires an explanation, which can also be summarized to adapt to the audience’s requirements (especially when there is lack of time). With the audience that gets information from social media outlets growing, we all have a responsibility to provide up to date and insightful summaries that help explain the story. The design department comes to the rescue creating templates that are attractive and easy to use. These examples show how readers can share the news, comment on it or simply get a preview of a story to read later.

Extending the brand across platforms

It is not enough to have a full coverage printed edition. In addition, editors strive to amplify the information spectrum with languages and formats that go beyond print, such as the addition of video to a story, or a live coverage of an event. At La Prensa, this is part of what is new with this rethink.

Tabloid format for weekends

It will be a format edition on weekends for La Prensa, and the contents have been organized accordingly. The different sections will appear with the following rhythm, Panorama, Sports, Business and Finance, Life and Busca Facil (classifieds). In addition, there is new content that interact with social media and the digital edition and its subscribers.