Elections, elections, read all about it

For the next couple weeks, I'm going to be sharing my thoughts on newspaper layout designs. For my first post of this series, I decided to focus on Chicago Tribune's front page designs of the past two elections.

In September 2008, the Trib redesigned their paper using more magazine elements and reducing the number of jumps in articles. Also, there is an index navigation at the top of each section, which I think is cool because it maps where you are, which is especially helpful when you're reading the Sunday edition. I know when I've read Sunday editions before the redesign, it was difficult to sift through all the sections because they were sorted in separate piles and hidden within one another. With the new navigation bar, it's easier to tell whether I want to flip forward or go back a section. It's also just a fun element that livens the paper up a bit.

The redesign gets rid of the staple Tribune blue in its masthead, but I think this marriage ended blissfully. Getting rid of the blue in the masthead allows for more room to use colored pictures without having to worry that it will clash with the blue. The masthead now uses a color photo as the background, modernizing the 161-year-old publication.

2004 Election

So, here's the front page of the Trib's final edition, Wednesday, November 3, 2004. (Sorry it's black and white. I couldn't find a color one, so I got this from the university's library.) Even though this paper is from the 21st century, it certainly does not look like it. The font used in the headline dates the look, and there is nothing in the format of the layout that excites the eye to move from graphic to graphic. Granted this election was post ballot recounts of 2000 and also during Bush's decline in popularity, I can see why the headline does not evoke as much excitement. It even reads with a monotonous tone. (Or could that be my bias because of all the negative media about Bush since his re-election?) Still, the paper should have shed more positive light on the selection of our nation's leader.

2008 Election

Here's this year's front page from the Trib printed Wednesday, November 5, 2008. How refreshing. With its redesign, the Trib has so much more liberty to use artistic elements in packaging its stories. The whole front page is designed like a magazine, with the large photo as a background and the text nicely spaced out at the bottom of the page. There is lots of white space, which is a new innovation in modern papers. Lots of papers like to fill its pages with text, text and more text, leaving little room for the reader to breathe, which risks losing them in a world of information overload.

Some may argue that the look of newspapers are what signifies a newspaper, and that magazine layout designs should be left to, well, magazines, but with the rise of online news sites, it's necessary for papers to follow and complement these sites. I completely agree that stories should be able to stand alone. But in an era with so many news sources, sites, blogs, papers, tabloids and much more, people are left to sort through the mess alone. Newspapers should help by packaging stories in a way that is easiest for readers to digest. Papers need to evolve with their readers. They need to change as they're now competing against clean, innovative web layouts for their readers.

Share what you think of these two layouts. :)