WaPo redesign

I walked out to pick up my Post this morning and some nefarious bastard switched it with a NY Times.

Hairlines between subheads. Multiple subheads on one story ("Top aides to Obama upbraid Wall St. | BONUSES AFTER THE BAILOUT | 'A year ago ... these institutions were teetering'"). Second byline eliminated, so no more Washington Post Staff Writer.

Different fonts all around; the heads are slightly different, the body copy considerably different, fatter and more squat. The column sigs are flat-out ugly, with mugs that look like they are pixelated; it looks like a takeoff of what the Boston Globe does with their columnists, only not quite so old school.

They did have the foresight to print an 8-page tab called "Redesign Owner's Manual," which of course tells us how wonderful all these changes are. At first glance, I can't say I'm a huge fan, if only because a fair amount of these ideas don't seem all that original.

Anyone else see this? Thoughts?

 

This should help:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/print/asectionfrontimage.html

 

Saw it this morning, too, but I didn't have a lot of time with it before I had to leave for work.

Didn't love it. Didn't hate it. I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually.

 

Substance trumps style.

If the paper is substantially relevant and worthy, I don't care what kind of design/style they use so long as it is legible and in the English language.

 

They need to work on consistency on their subheds. Some subheds are italic and others aren't; some have rules top and bottom and others don't; and it looks like some differ in size by 3 or 4 points. (Dallas Morning News uses the same subhed design.)

The gutters are also uneven.

 

Do not like. If it ain't broke ...

 

The column sigs look like they're from 1989 ... that isn't necessarily bad.

But it looks like not much of a change. Why bother?