USA Today's new layout

I know the old design was totally 1980s, but I miss it now.

 

The biggest improvement was that they finally went back to a normal font for agate. Their box scores and stats have been impossible to read for about a decade.

 

All the type in the thing is agate now, isn't it?

 

It looks like it. I picked up a Friday/weekend edition to show my wife and friends Saturday morning, and all three said they wouldn't read it because the type is too small.

Two of them are not in the journalism field. Both said "Why is there a teardrop at the top?" and "That's really ugly."

 

Saw an issue in a rack today. One thing that kind of stands out about the design when it's stacked against a bunch of other papers...is it doesn't stand out at all. It looks really soft. Probably needs a border around the skybox or something to say "this is important news." Instead, it looks like it is saying..."there is some news in here that you might like and we'd really appreciate it if you would pick us up."

 

One casualty appears to be the full page list each Tuesday of the college football scores. It wasn't in there last week. I loved that as a reference page.

 

I saw a USA Today in a hotel lobby the other day. The body type was incredibly small - to the point of really bothering me. I'm in my early 30s, but felt like I was 70 while hunched over trying to squint at the type.

 

I've given the website two weeks now - very tough to find stuff you are looking for. I generally like checking the Heistand column and other commentary pieces and the Sagarin rankings and they used to be easy to locate.
I don't know if this is the plan, or the stuff I like isn't as much of a priority as other items - I just know I spend less time there actually reading than I used to.

 

Gannett=fail.

 

Picked up a copy to read at lunch last week. It was awful.
For good or for bad, one thing I liked about it was the modular design. You could tell where the main cover story was. Now you have to hunt for it, and all the stories on the page bleed together. Nothing stands out. It's like looking at a 21st century version of an early 1900s newspaper page, where they stacked headlines upon headlines and had very little art.
Not a fan. Not at all.

 

Too long. Didn't read. Sorry, dude.

 

If their point was to change the 1980s look-like-a-TV-set design into a "modern" look-like-a-mobile-device design, they at least got the tiny, hard-to-read type correct.

It's awful.

And I don't know who they think is reading it anymore ... go to one of those continental breakfast rooms at a chain hotel these days, and no one's reading the free USA Today. They're all on cell phones, gadgets or Five Hour Energy.