05 december 2011

The newspaper as a shelving system

THE GUARDIAN iPAD APP is the most convincing and original response so far to the challenge of shaping a daily newspaper on the conditions of the tablet.

IN THE SAME WAY as early automobiles looked like horse carriages, the pioneers among newspaper and magazine apps have born a striking resemblance to their origin: newspapers and magazines. For this as well as other reasons, sometimes it might have been a bit hard to see what important needs this new publishing format was actually meeting … if you count away that luxurious feeling of being able to read your Danish morning paper by an Italian swimming pool.
It has been claimed that the so-called tablet has the potential to change our reading habits – and now all of a sudden, this statement sounds more plausible. An important change appeared two months ago when the British newspaper The Guardian launched its long-awaited iPad app. Which looks nothing like a newspaper. It looks like a Mondrian painting. Or, even more perhaps, it looks like a Montana shelving system.

NAVIGATING IT will give you the same pleasant feeling as walking around inside a great piece of architecture or using a really well-designed tool. The surroundings are simple, beautiful, and functional, and using this application feels natural and intuitive from the very first visit.
The architecture is profoundly simple, based on a grid consisting of squares which can be combined to form rectangles of varying shapes and sizes. The typography has been completely adjusted to the grid and this contributes to the overall impression of quality.
Content-wise, the iPad version is based on the daily paper, and transformation into tablet format is done semi-automatically. A script analyzes the InDesign pages and reshapes the stories while preserving the editorial hierarchy. The publisher’s ambition is to give readers the same sense of overview as when browsing through a ”real” paper – in which headlines and other ”landing spots” on the pages will give you a taste of all the stories, even the ones you decide to skip.

IN MY EYES, it does not work quite that way. Partly because some headlines, true to the anglo-saxon newspaper tradition, are more elegant than informative. This app inspires eclectic reading rather than it provides you with the complete overview offered by the traditional newspaper. However, reading the consistently well-written stories, typeset with the unique body type of The Guardian, on an iPad is an exquisite pleasure. And the video clips accompanying some articles make this reader feel like entering the world of Harry Potter.

CRITICAL VOICES have noted that the Guardian iPad edition is in fact outdated by the time of publication, just like the printed newspaper, and that it ought to include more interactive features such as readers’ comments. To me, this critique seems a bit misplaced; if you have a wish for constant updating, it can be perfectly fulfilled by the excellent Guardian website – to which, by the way, the iPad edition is linking comprehensively. This app is something else.

IT WILL BE INTERESTING to see how the elegant yet powerful colour palette marking the different sections – at the same time as it creates a very Guardianish atmosphere – will work when ”real” ads begin to appear on the pages. For the first four months, the entire publication is being sponsored by Channel 4, and outside the UK, their advertising space will be filled by The Guardian’s self-promotion.
The app, which was built for iOS 5 and works only on an iPad 2, comes for free until January 13, 2012. After then, a monthly subscription will get you rid of GBP 9,99.


01 december 2011

The Politiken redesign: Much ado about n…

POLITIKEN, the Danish morning daily which has won loads of design awards in recent years, launched a modest redesign today. Mediawatch asked me what I thought.
Here’s the interview – in Danish. In case you’re interested and do not read Danish, perhaps now is the time to test Google Translate …

Text by Tine Brødegaard Hansen

De oversælger redesignet”
Politiken slår lidt for meget på tromme for nyt design, som indtil videre giver mindre logik til broadsheet-formatet, mener designkonsulent Ole Munk.

Broadsheet-formatet får ikke mere liv af Politikens nye design, der skal sikre læserne bedre overblik og mere fokus på nyhederne, mener designkonsulent Ole Munk fra Ribergård & Munk, der har stået bag flere redesign af aviser.
“Det store problem er, at avisen ikke har stof til at udfylde de kæmpe sider. Derfor er det vanskeligt at begrunde, hvorfor avisen skal være broadsheet,” siger Ole Munk og tilføjer:
“Størrelsen på billederne er kun i få tilfælde berettiget, og for eksempel er det latterligt, at billedet af Margrethe Vestager på side 19 fylder en kvart side. Det tilfører ikke noget journalistisk til historien, og det er der mange af billederne som ikke gør.”


Side 8 og 9 domineres ikke af journalistiske billeder, men af en stor annonce, hvilket Ole Munk også hæfter sig ved.
”Når man læser de sider på en iPad, kan man se, at indholdet snildt kan være der, mens det fylder seks gange så meget i avisen.”
Det samme gør sig gældende for 2. sektions bagside, der ligeledes kunne være skaleret ned, og dermed havde virket bedre, mener Ole Munk.
Argumenterne om, at broadsheet sikrer overblik og giver plads til flotte grafiske elementer og fotos holder ikke helt, ifølge ham.
“Så mange fantastiske billeder er der ikke i avisen, så det sande argument for den størrelse er nok nærmere, at annoncørerne er glade for at få så meget plads.”
Afskaffelsen af nyhedsbåndet med citathistorier i toppen af siderne er den ændring, der får mest ros af Ole Munk.
“Nyhedsbåndet var en konstruktionsfejl fra starten, fordi det så ufattelig kedeligt ud, og fordi de små tekster var langt væk fra læserens øjne. Så det er en god idé, at der er lavet en mere iøjnefaldende løsning,” siger han om elementet ’overblik’ med korte historier, der nu er samlet i en sidespalte.
Ole Munk mener ligeledes, at ambitionen om at skabe mere overblik, blandt andet ved hjælp af avisens side 2, er vellykket.
”Politiken har mange gode folk, der kan deres grafiske håndværk, og man kan generelt sige, at overblikselementerne er veludførte og fungerer godt. De grafiske elementer hjælper læseren med at navigere i avisen,” siger Ole Munk.
Han mener dog, at der er slået lige lovlig meget på tromme for ændringerne, som har fået flere helsider op til det nye design gik i luften i dag.
”De oversælger redesignet og overvurderer også betydningen af ændringerne for oplevelsen af avisen. De ting, der er meget store, når man arbejder på avisen, er ikke så store og betydningsfulde for læserne. Så det kan virke lidt komisk. Retfærdigvis er Politikens læsere dog et nichesegment, der nok tillægger avisens design større betydning end andre avislæsere,” siger Ole Munk, som mener at avisens ”første forside”, der består af en humoristisk tegnet fortolkning af avisens normale forside, ikke ville fungere andre steder.
”Tegningen på forsiden er vidunderlig, og det sætter Politiken-læsere pris på. På Berlingske og Jyllands-Posten ville sådan en forside have været en katastrofe,” siger Ole Munk.

Politikens tegnede forside 1. december 2011: