USA Today's new layout

Um...yuck?

http://jimromenesko.com/2012/09/13/here-is-the-redesigned-usa-today/

Plus, they got rid of the "paper" in their slogan. Now it's: "The Nation's News"

 

My first verbalized reaction: "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

 

Deck chairs, Titanic. Rinse. Repeat.

 

That looks like shit.

That looks like ass.

 

It looks like a fucking PTA newsletter, but should we be surprised?

 

THEY'RE FUCKIN' HORRIBLE LOOKIN'!!!

 

When I give a damn about anything USA Today does, that'll be a first.

 

It is way too clean and basic. I don't think it stands out in a good or bad manner.

 

Oh, it's not that bad.

Why trap that much white space in the banner though?

 

They tried to make it look like a Web page, which was a horrible mistake from the get-go. If you want people to buy print, you have to make it different from what you put online. That's why you buy something: because it offers a feature you can't get elsewhere. Whoever thought "Oh, readers look at the Internet more so let's make the pages look like the Internet!" had their head ridiculously far up their ass.

There's innovative and there's trying to be too cute. This is the latter.

 

How long before all Gannett papers look like this?

 

Bought one today (of course I did -- I'm living in a hotel!).

First glance, it looks like a poorly designed full-page advertorial from the ad department, only the advertorial runs page after page. A mishmash of fonts, weird white space, but plenty of room for ads on editorial pages (an 1/8th page box on A1, versus the usual horizontal bottom strip.

On further look, it gets worse. They tout more use of color, but looked to me to be far less colorful. The section headers (a big circle, sometimes tweaked to match a story on the page) is just stupid.

Overall, they took a unique, interesting product...and down-res'ed it, as we say in TV. Looks like a local Gannett paper, which I guess is appropriate since there were several local paper bylines throughout.