First look -- Sun Sentinel redesign

[steveu]

Or should I say now, SunSentinel. That's right, no hyphen. Like the poster at visualeditors.com says, Tribune cut back the hyphen too.

Visualeditors.com has more: http://www.visualeditors.com/apple/2008/08/first-look-south-florida-sunsentinel-redesign/

Fire away. 

[sportschick]

1) That's really fucking busy. Ugh.

2) Why write stories when you can just have refers? Whoever came up with that was stupid.

[OnTheRiver]

"Hard to stomach" ...

Delicious, delicious irony.

[da man]

Once more, is it irony that the big headline reads "Hard to Stomach"?


Edit: Aaaaaaaaaargh! Beat me to it.

[playthrough]

That giant "S" looks like a supermarket logo. I'm still fuddy-duddy enough to want the name of my paper at and across the top. Take the rest of the space for the goofy stuff, like 12 teases for 20 pages of news.

[spnited]

So what redeisgners do now is take a few cans of paint, throw them against a wall and decide how those colors will look on a newspaper page.

Those top of the page refers are god-awful, the centerpiece (or is it ONLYpiece) on the page is way too busy.
I'd  like the bottom page refers if there were fewer of them nd not 17 different colors.

[BigSleeper]

Of all its problems, the one thing that struck me was the abundance of the color red. I'm not sure of the effectiveness of a employing a specific color palette to help establish a paper's identity, but when I think south Florida, I don't think red. Blech.

[jlee]

"We're after occasional readers, people who don't feel they have the time or enough interest to read our paper on a regular basis."

Great strategy.

Still, good to see someone doing more than just laying off a few dozen people.

[pallister]

I don't understand why redesigns seem to get locked into one "innovative" idea. Every recent design I've seen has been based on the same general template. It's not innovative if everyone's doing it.

[Saint Lou]

Wow. Just awful.

[dixiehack]

I don't think newspapers want to survive. I think we're all just bit players in the world's largest production of "Springtime for Hitler."

[Moderator1]

Wonder how much they save in ink by dropping that pesky hyphen?

It did remind me I need to stop at the grocery store on the way home.   The Queen is on the road again so the dogs and I will eat some steak.  

[MileHigh]

Thumbs down from a former South Floridian.

[expendable]

I don't think newspapers want to survive. I think we're all just bit players in the world's largest production of "Springtime for Hitler."

That's freakin' solid.

Sad, but solid.

[expendable]

Thumbs down from a former South Floridian.

That's SouthFloridian to them...

[Diabeetus]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the bad grammar in the hed:

HEY, WHERE'S OUR REBATE CHECKS?

Hey, where is our rebate checks? No!!! Where ARE our rebate checks. Cut them all!

[slappy4428]

Forget looking here. I went over to the place where true designers go -- comicbookguy.com -- or whatever it is supposed to be. His head hasn't exploded yet, so it must be OK...

[playthrough]

I don't understand why redesigns seem to get locked into one "innovative" idea. Every recent design I've seen has been based on the same general template. It's not innovative if everyone's doing it.

It's not innovative, period. I saw mock front pages with all teases and an art-heavy centerpiece 10 years ago.

[partain]

Looks very similar to a redesign of the Colorado Springs Gazette a few years back. They went with a big 'G' in the upper corner. I think it lasted six months before going mostly back to the previous format.

Guess that means it didn't work there. I have no reason to believe the outcome in South Florida will be any better.

[JayFarrar]

It isn't awful.
It isn't great.
They use typography as an art element, which seems more like a small paper where you don't have wire photography to lean on. Like playthrough, I saw similar designs more than a decade ago. All refers and a one-story centerpiece.
I don't like how they eliminated the flag. The button logo is fine, if it used in conjunction with something else but it isn't in this case.
If the idea was to be completely different than the competition, I would say it was a success.

[dixiehack]

The cheeseball "Help Team Consumer Report" label that they so blatently stole from last place TV newscasts everywhere is what set me over the edge, I think. Why not go all the way and use "Stay classy South Florida" as a page-topper?

[SoCalDude]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the bad grammar in the hed:

HEY, WHERE'S OUR REBATE CHECKS?

Hey, where is our rebate checks? No!!! Where ARE our rebate checks. Cut them all!

   First thing I saw, first thing I thought.
   If the story has a mistake in the lede, why read it? If the top headline in the whole paper has a head bust, why read it?

[SF_Express]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the bad grammar in the hed:

HEY, WHERE'S OUR REBATE CHECKS?

Hey, where is our rebate checks? No!!! Where ARE our rebate checks. Cut them all!

   First thing I saw, first thing I thought.
   If the story has a mistake in the lede, why read it? If the top headline in the whole paper has a head bust, why read it?

Well, not to excuse it whatsoever, but I don't let a typo or even a head break stop me from reading a story. That's a nice old journalism saw -- doesn't really work that way.

Property taxes cot 30 percent

I'm not going to read that? Sorry.

That said, this is now my "new" paper, and just continuing an unhappy trend.

[Diabeetus]

I'd still read it...it's just a pet peeve of mine and a mistake someone shouldn't have made. Especially on something going on display to show off a redesign.

[SF_Express]

I'd still read it...it's just a pet peeve of mine and a mistake someone shouldn't have made. Especially on something going on display to show off a redesign.

All true, of course.