Raina Toomey, who has assisted Gayle Grin during the course of this project, designed this Citizen front page
Here is a front page from Tuesday's Ottawa Citizen, sent by Gayle Grin, design director for the National Post of Canada, with whom we worked closely in our recent collaboration for a rethink of how news is presented in the Postmedia newspapers.
Gayle is right when she calls attention to this page as one that she thinks hit the spot for our goals and objectives in this project.
I agree. I am showcasing the page today because it is an example of what I always refer to “doing print happily”.
Why is this front page special?
1. The lead piece is not so much about breaking news but about an ongoing story—the issue of parking availability at the local stadium. Local and essential, but not necessarily in the breaking news category. For purposes of the Postmedia project, with digital first now, print has been used here precisely for what it does best: to analyze, to offer commentary, to guide.
2. The headline does not include a verb, giving the story more of a “lean back” tempo
3. The information architecture: notice the way navigation is presented: teasers at the top deal with stories you should not miss, but the rest of the newspaper's content is split into simply three buckets: You, Context, Sports.
4. The main story is a commentary, complete with the visual treatment given opinion pieces, including photo of writer (we know that younger readers specifically like to see the photo of the writer accompanying story).
5. Photo dominance: one visual element is five times bigger than any other on the page.
All in all, a page that passes the coffee table test: if one sees it there, one must pick it up.
Good job. More than doing print happily, this is doing the front page functionally, too.