Great news from the global kiosk

THREE YEARS CAN BE A LONG TIME. On April 3, 2010, the Apple iPad was released – and wow, what a breathtaking development the app market has undergone since then. To a news junkie, a very fascinating aspect is that it has become so easy to go shopping in the ”global kiosk”. The App Store business model may not deserve recognition for its fairness but from a customer’s point of view, it’s a winner.
Try downloading a couple of issues of LaPresse+ (it is free) or the iPad version of Dagens Nyheter (price 19 DKK) – just to name a few examples – and enjoy the quality of these publications, design-wise as well as regarding content. To newspapers and magazines with more limited budgets, like those published in my own country which only five million people will ever be able to read, this is pretty harsh competition.

The new app from the weekly magazine New York caught my attention a couple of weeks ago and is certainly worth a look. Not least because it challenges a couple of tablet format guidelines which had already more or less become conventions.

NEW YORK was founded in 1968 by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker. It was conceived to be an unorthodox competitor to the well-established The New Yorker and soon became a cradle for new journalism. Over the years, such notable writers as Nora Ephron and Tom Wolfe have contributed to the magazine. A tablet edition has existed since October 2010 but this new app is a completely revamped version.

What impresses me most with the New York app is its bold and original approach to solving the dilemma between linear and non-linear publishing. Everybody knows that the contents of a digital publication can be updated every second, contrary to a printed publication which is by definition static and basically must have a linear narrative pattern. Consequently, in a digital environment, users may find it strange if nothing is happening for twenty-four hours (not to mention seven days).

On the other hand, if the contents are constantly changing, it can make you feel like you are never ”done”. Many readers appreciate volumes that have a beginning and an end. As Mario Garcia wrote recently in a comment to the new desktop app from The Economist: ”Readers want to read news editions that come to an end”.

So here we have a dilemma. And trying to combine the two types of publishing can lead to confusing results, as I described last year in my review of the first version of the Berlingske app.

THE NEW YORK SOLUTION is solomonic. The magazine has simply split the opening page in two and introduced a ”slider” which the user can draw up or down in order to switch between the magazine and an iPad-adapted version of the nymag.com news updates.
At first glance, this looks as strange as it sounds. However, as the entire app design is corresponding very elegantly to this ”two-face” architecture, it didn’t take me long to get used to the concept. In fact, I think it is pretty smart, rather than odd.

Another bold New York move is the decision to refrain from landscape mode. If you rotate your tablet 90 degrees, a small icon will appear on the screen which simply tells you to return to portrait mode.
Now wouldn’t it be great for all the magazine designers of the world if it might become standard procedure to make this basic choice – either it’s horizontal format, or vertical – instead of always having to offer users both options … with all the practical drawbacks, and very few actual benefits, this freedom-of-choice gives them?

THE FACT THAT NEW YORK CHOSE PORTRAIT MODE indicates that its editors must value words higher than visuals, because it cannot be denied that photography loses impact.
The overall visual appearance of this app is very concincing, though, with only one small minus for the body text which looks a little crabbed on my iPad 2. But perhaps it works better on a Retina display?

An ice blue colour marks everything that has to do with navigation and multimedia (mainly audio), meaning that users will quickly learn how to work the new app and enjoy its contents – which are impressive, in quantity as well as quality. To those who plan to visit the Big Apple, this is a must-read. And to the rest of us, it is definitely worth a look.

A drawing style is like a tone of voice

”THESE ARE DRAWINGS NOT PHOTOS. WHATS THE PROBLEM?”

Just one of many users’ comments from Huffington Post to the current debate on a controversial magazine cover illustration. To be fair, THE WEEK run a caricature on almost every single front page they publish; therefore, frequent readers of the magazine must be used to this drawing style and might not see this particular front page as being quite as offensive as some other people – including this blogger – do.

Anyway, what intrigues me is not so much the discussion on potential racism and the fact that the artist depicted the Tsarnaev brothers less ”white” than they actually are. Although this is indeed interesting, and probably says a lot about the American society. Two rather good-looking young men (one slightly handsomer than the other) have been portrayed as jowly, gloomy-faced frights. And the one thing upsetting us is that their skin was made a tad darker than it actually is.

BUT THERE’S ANOTHER PROBLEM. And that is the impression people – a majority of Huffington Post users, at least (or, rather, a majority of those who commented on the story) – seem to have of illustrations. They appear to think that if it’s a drawing, anything goes. If you are an artist, you can do whatever you please.
Now of course cartoonists should enjoy great freedom. They must have the liberty to portray Dimitri Medvedev as a puppet – and even Angela Merkel as a nazi officer (although I personally find that analogy inappropriate) – in order to criticize not so much the appearances of these men and women, as their actions.

But what some people may not realize is how much is communicated through the drawing style.
A drawing style is like a ”tone of voice” with which an artist can add nuances to a visual statement and imply how that statement should be interpreted.

The more grotesque a picture looks, the more obvious it will be to the viewer that its statement should not be taken literally.
And once we realize that it is not to be taken literally, we’ll start looking for more layers, searching for an underlying message of the illustration. A subtler message, often kind of symbolic, often using metaphors.

AS I SEE IT, the main problem with the cover illustration of the Tsarnaev brothers is that there are no hidden layers to be found. This drawing does not ask to be scrutinized, it contains nothing more than what you see at first glance.
And its message is plain and simple: ”Here’s what these two guys look like, see what kind of monsters they are”.
This drawing is pure propaganda. It wants to manipulate us into seeing two Chechen immigrants as the essence of evil.

In a way, that is kind of strange, as the headline – and the subhead in particular – suggests a depth and a willingness to try digging down into the true substance of the story which could have been accompanied much more convincingly by a different kind of images. Pictures implying that these two men may be human after all, not just monsters, in spite of their horrible deed.

I have not read the article. But I suspect that the choice of illustration might be due to poor judgment and lack of skill rather than bad intentions.
But that is another story.

Thanks to Hari Stephen Kumar for composing the above picture package.

Gratisavis efter schweizisk recept

NULLERNE VAR DET ÅRTI, hvor den danske ungdom læste avis. Med MetroXPress som spydspids lykkedes det gratisaviserne at nå to befolkningsgrupper, der ellers havde glimret ved deres fravær i læserstatistikkerne: Folk med indvandrerbaggrund – og dem under 30.

I de senere år er der imidlertid blevet længere mellem avislæserne i tog og busser, og især de unge dropper i stigende grad papirmediet til fordel for smartphones. Det skal der laves om på, mener schweiziske Tamedia, der købte MetroXPress kort før jul og fire måneder senere relancerede avisen på både papir og web … efter samme opskrift, som har givet koncernens gratisavis 20 Minuten succes på hjemmebane.

DET MED OPSKRIFTEN skal tages bogstaveligt. MetroXPress ser nu ud nøjagtig ligesom 20 Minuten, der er kun sprog og logo til forskel. Til gengæld er der absolut intet tilbage af det ”gamle” MetroXPress – lige bortset fra en chefredaktør og en gruppe medarbejdere, for hvem det må føles en smule sært at skulle levere et radikalt anderledes produkt end det, der trods alt var et af Danmarks mest læste dagblade, da de gik på påskeferie.

På indholdssiden ses det, at sigtekornet nu er rettet mod et yngre publikum. Natteliv, kendte, dyr og underholdning fylder godt i spalterne, ligesom der synes at være et øget fokus på sex; måske på baggrund af de erfaringer, den ny chefredaktør-nummer-to Niels Pinborg har taget med sig fra Ekstra Bladet.

DERIMOD VIRKER AVISENS DESIGN bestemt ikke ungdommeligt. Siderne er fattige på kontraster. Citater og faktabokse optræder yderst sparsomt, ikke engang mellemrubrikker er der til at peppe den store mængde grå brødtekst op. Og skriftvalget kunne næppe være mere traditionelt; kun ”skrivemaskineskriften” Jubilant skiller sig ud i den ellers helt neutrale typografi. Det er sådan set ikke grimt, det virker bare mærkeligt, at man ikke forsøger sig med noget lidt mere funky.

Det eneste, som med lidt god vilje kan kaldes moderne, er det ny handy format, der syd for grænsen er kendt som ”halvberliner” og benyttes af blandt andet Hamburger Morgenpost. Lille, men dog tilstrækkelig stort til, at tryksagen opleves som en avis. Det trækker imidlertid fra, om ikke andet så i miljøregnskabet, at formatet her i landet kun kan produceres ved at trykke en tabloidavis og skære en trediedel af papiret væk.

EN ØGET SATSNING PÅ NETTET er udtryk for, at læsermigrationen mod digitale platforme bliver taget alvorligt. I lyset heraf må det undre, at de to udgivelseskanaler slet ikke er tænkt ind i et fælles visuelt univers. Kun det blå logo – der både på print og web fremstår undseligt og karakterløst – antyder, at mx.dk er i familie med papiravisen.

Det meget enkelt opbyggede site synes i øvrigt designet til smartphonens lille skærm, hvor det fungerer ganske fortrinligt. Formen er dog ikke responsiv; mit gæt på en forklaring er, at såvel web- som printdesign sikkert har nogle år på bagen.

Nå, indtil videre er det naturligvis papiravisen, indtægterne skal komme fra. Og hvis den virkelig hitter blandt teenagere i Schweiz, må der være større forskel på de to landes ungdom, end jeg gik og forestillede mig. Man skal være varsom med at lege profet; men undertegnede vil ikke blive overrasket, hvis MetroXPress med sit ny indhold kommer til at vinke farvel til en del af sine mere modne læsere. Uden at få held med at løfte læsningen substantielt blandt de unge, som man så gerne vil have fat i.

Beauty and the Beast

ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL – and simple – ways to combine visuals and words: Run a strong photograph, one which your audience simply cannot miss, and let the headline suggest how that photo should be interpreted. Thereby, the text works as a scalpel that removes unintended meanings from the image (basically, there are three different ways to perform the operation, as described in this e-booklet).

By a strange coincidence, two of my morning papers used the exact same formula for yesterday’s front page – even though the cover stories had no other similarities.

POLITIKEN’S TOP STORY, like most others’ on that memorable day, was about the suspected Boston terrorists. The AP pic shows Dzhokhar Tsaraev on a neutral white background, a mug shot or passport photo most likely, and the headline says ”Here is the new enemy image of the USA”.
The smaller, slightly more intellectual Copenhagen daily Information promoted a two-page reportage in the weekend supplement, discussing (quote) ”the new enemy image of Danish politics” – personified in the Danish Minister of Finance.
The white headline below the somber depiction of Bjarne Corydon translates like this:
”THE EVIL FORCE?”.

Both front pages carry a portrait of a man and a headline stating that this particular man is something more than just a man; that he is a threat, maybe even the personification of evil?
They both use a strong photograph to nuance their statements (to be fair, Information’s headline is in fact a question, albeit a pretty slanted one). But they use the scalpel – the headline – quite differently, almost in opposite ways.

POLITIKEN PLAYS ON AN ELEMENT OF SURPRISE. If Dzhokhar Tsaraev had looked like Mohammed Atta, we would find it easy to believe that he is simply an evil person. But this handsome youngster with soft brown eyes and casual hairdo, so much like the kid next door (the white background is, of course, adding to his pureness)? He can’t be evil. Someone must have been leading him astray. How could he possibly be our enemy?

Nevertheless, the article tells us that’s what he is. The beauty turns into a beast.

What the article does not substantiate – and I see this as a weakness in an otherwise strong piece of communication – is the idea that Tsaraev and his brother are not just two tragic individuals. The headline implies that their likes can be found elsewhere in the American society. Quite possibly, drawing such conclusions would be premature … but I still think that is what the headline says, and that the overall message suffers when it turns out not to be the point of the article. The headline ”promises” more than the package can deliver.
(In this particular case, that is of course a good thing, as nobody wishes to live in a world where every cheerful, good-looking, brown-eyed boy has to be viewed as a potential threat. However, if we focus on the communication, it is still a problem).

INFORMATION’S APPROACH IS LESS SUBTLE. Every pixel of Sofie Amalie Klougart’s portrait communicates drama, gloom, even horror. The background looks cold and dark, the lighting is hard, one eye staring, the other one scowling in the shadow: Sure, this guy could easily pass as the Prince of Darkness.
However, as hinted at by the headline’s question mark, this reportage actually discusses whether that is a fair designation. In the eyes of many Danes, Bjarne Corydon has become a symbol of all the things that are wrong with politics. This article makes an attempt to diversify the conversation, quoting experts who believe that our Minister of Finance is simply trying to do what he thinks is right and – maybe atypical for a politician – will not yield even when people start to hate him.

Hence the question mark. But is that enough?
All in all, the statement adds up to: Obviously evil man (image) + THE EVIL FORCE (headline) + question mark. Lots of evil, little doubt.
In the eyes of most people – even the well-educated, creative-class readers of Information – I am afraid the overall message will still be: You’re right, he’s evil.
The beast remains a beast.

SO, IF YOU FOLLOW MY DRIFT, how could the message have become clearer?
Well, in this case, the image is so powerful, and almost one-dimensional, that the headline might have worked better had it offered an alternative interpretation. Maybe even contradicting the image (which is in fact how Politiken executed their top story).
Try to imagine the same photo with a headline like, for instance, ”The Good Shepherd”. Could be pretty effectful, huh?
In any case, what is important is to let your audience understand, even before they start reading the article, if you are out on a different mission than the one they’ll expect. If you don’t, many will miss your point and just see what they have gotten used to seeing.

TO SUMMON UP: A newspaper story has two layers. In both the examples I have discussed today – strong as they are – there is a tiny discrepancy between the message of the top layer (photo + headline) and the bottom layer (the actual article). No big deal, these are still great examples of visual communication. But as the top layer defines the bias – it ”tunes me in” and implies how I should read the bottom layer – there is a risk that I won’t get the finer details of the message.
As we also know, some people rarely proceed from the top layer – and this part of your audience might simply misunderstand what you are trying to tell them.

LinkedIn is catching steam

IT IS A JOB PORTAL! It is a debate forum! It is a social media! It is a news site!
It is … LinkedIn!

The ”Facebook of the Pros” used to be overshadowed by its more well-known big brother (who is in fact a kid brother, as LinkedIn can now celebrate its tenth anniversary). From the start, LinkedIn was known mainly as the place to flash your résumé in the hope that some rich employer would see it. And as far as dryness goes, the visual appearance of the site provided a perfect match to its contents.

In recent years, the level of ambition has risen – and with the 2011 signing of Dan Roth, former online director at Fortune Magazine, LinkedIn put itself on the map as a serious player on the publishing field. A position which last week’s acquisition of news-reader Pulse will only make stronger. LinkedIn now operates as an aggregator of news from more than a million publications worldwide, in a selection that accords to the preferences of the user, and as a discussion forum for professionals from all corners of the world. Last year, the presentation sharing site SlideShare was added to the network, showing us that LinkedIn also aspires to becoming a virtual conference room. 

IMPROVED CONTENT calls for more sophisticated design, and in 2012, new costumes were introduced for linkedin.com, as well as for the mobile and tablet apps. Everything now looks much better and more inviting. Not surprisingly however, LinkedIn’s constant expansions and changes in architecture end content has made consistency suffer. For the time being, not much more than a logotype and a black/blue/steel colour style is there to visually connect the different LinkedIn channels.
And one may wonder why the iPhone app feels so much more coherent, and even has more functions, than the one for iPad – in which the main division into three columns seems illogical (the mobile app has four, which makes much more sense), old notifications you’ve already read seem to keep popping up forever, and you cannot even edit your profile.

NB: In a flick of fate, this blogpost was published two days before LinkedIn launched a completely redesigned app for iPhone (as you’ll understand, I would have preferred them to take a shot at the tablet version). Anyway, this new one looks like it will take some getting used to. I’ll be back with more comments when I have decided what to think.

While the website’s new concept is clearly inspired by Facebook and Google+, and LinkedIn for iPhone looks more or less like a modern TimeManager – for instance, you can synchronize your calendar with LinkedIn and thereby get sneak peeks at persons you’re going to meet – the iPad edition seems more inspired by Flipboard, the main component being kind of a news gallery with no clear chronology or prioritization. Maybe soon the news section will look more like Pulse?
Anyway, I am not so sure that this rigid distinction between the three platforms corresponds to equally substantial differences in the way people actually use them. From my point of view, LinkedIn has been overdoing this part a little bit. And as already mentioned, one of the consequences is a lack of cross-platform consistency.
But then again, nothing prevents me from using my tablet to visit the website.

LINKEDIN IS MAKING MONEY. Last year’s 86% growth in revenue (to 972.3 million USD) ought to stir some interest in an industry where traditional sources of income seem destined to dry out. Allow me to quote Owen Thomas who predicts that ”LinkedIn is becoming the newspaper of the future”:

”(LinkedIn) sells subscriptions — high-end tools for professional recruiters, simpler offerings for job seekers and salespeople. It sells what used to be called classifieds ads in the form of job listings. And it sells ads to brands looking to target its audience of professionals. Pulse's apps expand the audience for that latter offering.
That mix of display advertising, classifieds, and subscriptions, all riding on top of one core product, reminds me of the newspaper business model of old, back when that was a highly profitable business”.

THIS IS ALL VERY INTERESTING.

For LinkedIn.

But hardly a solution to the overall problems of the newspaper industry.


Back in the late nineties, I listened to a talk by Kjell A Nordström – the author of Funky Business – about how to succeed professionally in the future. I remember Nordström stating that on a global business arena, ”the winner takes it all” (of course, a Swedish professor has to make an ABBA quotation).

Since then, I believe that his point has been proven.
There’s only room for one LinkedIn. One Google. One New York Times.
Why would you want to join the world’s second-biggest network when you can become a member of the number one, and what could possibly make you want to use the world’s second-best search machine?


Bottom line: In order to survive, every player on the future media scene will have to be original. Something special. Number one in their own particular ballgame.

Quite a challenge for all those among us who are just trying to do our job …

USA Today goes all-in on digital

OUR IDEA OF HOW A NEWSPAPER SHOULD LOOK changed in 1982 with the launch of USA Today. Sure, people would soon nickname it ”McPaper” because of its brief, easy-to-read stories, but USA Today became an influence to just about every other paper on the planet. Before the end of the decade, newspaper readers throughout the Western Hemisphere would expect to see full-colour photography, information graphics, and wall-to-wall weather forecasts in their local daily.
You cannot, however, make a living based on merits of the past, especially not if you’re a news media, and the redesign with which USA Today celebrated its 30-year anniversary – on September 14, 2012 – must be seen partly as a response to dramatically declining circulation figures over a period of more than ten years.

WHAT THE RELAUNCH ALSO SEEMS TO SIGNAL is a change of strategy, in which digital platforms are getting the key role while the printed paper begins to look like an ageing and increasingly troublesome patient. A patient which the publisher, Gannett, must feel compelled to keep breathing as long as it has got enough readers and advertisers. And I guess it still does; every night, the presses turn out 1,7 million copies of USA Today (more than half of these end up in hotel corridors all over the world).

SEVERAL CONSULTANCY COMPANIES WERE INVOLVED in USA Today’s grand-scale relaunch. Maybe that is part of the reason why the result appears strangely schizophreniac. Parts of it, such as the website and the mobile app, boast great functionality – and novelty as well, although not quite as revolutionary as back then in ’82 – while the tablet app seems much more middle-of-the-road and the printed product is a genuine setback.
Not least when it comes to the typography. The modern and consistent typographical look, which had been distinguishing USA Today since its latest facelift in 2000, leaves way for a typography so conventional – and treated with so little refinement – that the paper now almost looks like a caricature of an old-school American local daily.
But why, is the obvious question?
The only plausible answer I can think of relates to the aforementioned strategic choices, but in a strange, backwards-logical way: The printed paper seems now to be conceived as a platform for ”traditionalists” who – the concept makers apparently presume – prefer things to look the way they did 50 years ago.

The wisdom of this conception can certainly be subject to discussion. In any case, addressing traditionalists is no excuse for bad typography, and there is a lot of that in the new USA Today. 45 days after the relaunch, it was announced that the body typeface had now been ”darkened and enlarged” as readers were complaining that it was difficult to read. A small improvement; still, the new typography looks very old to me.

SELLING THE NEW USA TODAY CONCEPT to the client must have taken quite a lot of eloquence. Controversial solutions are nothing new to the masterminds behind the overall strategy. Wolff Olins’ portfolio includes the London 2012 identity program, just to name one example.
In the case of USA Today, the main target of criticism has been the new ”logo” – that is, if the coloured ball, which has replaced the iconic yet kind of outdated globe, deserves this designation. The big idea was to create a logo ”as dynamic as the news itself” (I’m not kidding, this was what they wrote in the press release) by allowing all kinds of roundish shapes to replace the ball – on page A1 as well as on the section fronts.
This idea is exactly as stupid as it sounds. For two reasons: a) The circle is a generic shape which may just as well let you associate to hundreds of other brands (Blaupunkt, just to name one) … and b) it will completely dissolve and dilute the brand if the logo may be a golf ball one day and a poker chip on the next.
Not surprisingly, after one month with changing ”logos” executed with varying degrees of professionalism (creating a good logo takes not only talent and skill, but time as well, as every graphic designer knows), the publisher Larry Kramer declared that variation would now be restricted for a while … ”to establish the logo”.

THE WEBSITE IS THE MOST SUCCESSFUL PART of the USA Today relaunch. The blue ball has been downscaled to a size where no one will be tempted to mess around with it, it looks better in RGB colour than on print, and is basically an improvement as the old globe didn’t work well at all in screen resolution.
In general, space has been used intelligently, with a fine balance between visuals and words. With its simplicity, usatoday.com has a distinctly 2012 feel, and of course, the design is responsive. The horizontal scrolling strikes me as a fresh, iPad-ish feature, and you might wonder why USA Today refrained from implementing this navigation tool in its tablet app which now seems almost redundant. Not least considering that both products are free.

Now you see her, now you don’t

AS I USUALLY SEE MYSELF as what you might call a ”visual” person, I am always intrigued by the things I don’t see. The human brain has a fascinating ability to filter the important information from the not-so-important parts. An ability which allows us to perceive only what we need to navigate safely through life, and reflect upon only what we find meaningful.

What can be particularly fascinating is the way the brain lets us completely ignore even powerful visual signals if the information does not seem relevant to us. Every parent can recall the surprise when you realized that your local supermarket contained a huge diaper section – one which you had never stumbled upon during the years before your first child was born. And you’ll probably agree with me that this is not because diapers are discreetly wrapped.
Another example is the fact that once you have bought a Toyota, suddenly the roads seem crowded with cars of that particular make (of course, you can substitute ”Toyota” with any car name). How could you have missed all these Toyotas before?

WELL, HERE’S A NEWSPAPER FRONT PAGE with a photograph you cannot miss. Or can you?
As a matter of fact, I could. And that’s what prompted me to write this blogpost.

Like most couples I guess, my wife and I go by the Law of the Jungle when sharing our morning paper: Each of us tries to grab the section that looks most interesting. Yesterday, I was attracted to Martin Bubandt’s wonderful, dramatic, and highly communicative photograph on the Politiken PS section front, showing Annette Vilhelmsen climbing the stairs of the Danish parlament:

Let me explain a bit about the background. Since last year, my country has been ruled by a coalition consisting of three political parties, one of which is the Socialist People’s Party which has never before been part of any Danish government. The socialists have had to face a lot of criticism because of the compromises they have accepted to stay within the coalition, and some weeks ago, the leader of the party resigned. Two female members of the party are now fighting for the chairperson’s seat. One is the lady portrayed in yesterday’s Politiken.

THE HEADLINE SAYS ”Will Vilhelmsen go all the way?” and goes well with Bubandt’s photo, a phenomenal depiction of the politician’s current situation: She’s about to climb into the unknown, a future full of uncertainty to her – until a few weeks ago, a relatively anonymous figure from the party ranks, someone few of us had even heard of – as well as to her party which may, under a new leadership, find it even more difficult to remain part of the government.

At the same time, this photo sets the scene in quite a dramatic way, resembling a renaissance painting rather than a press photograph, and elegantly twists the genre of the portrait photo by showing Vilhemsen from behind, steering our attention to her businesswomanlike authority rather than to her rather stern facial expression which, albeit she’s a new face in Danish media, we have already come to know quite well.

This photograph made me read and enjoy Olav Hergel’s article. In other words, it served both as an effective landing spot and as a strong piece of communication in its own right, leaving me a happy newspaper reader.

IMAGINE MY SURPRISE when I opened the e-paper to download this brilliant section front for educational purposes, and I saw the frontpage, only to realize that when reading my morning paper, I had not noticed the main photograph! How can you miss a photo like that?
I checked the rest of the page contents and yes indeed, I had read the main headline (not about Vilhelmsen), as well as the skyboxes, several of which had made me look up the particular stories they were promoting. But the photo, also by Martin Bubandt and with a bold, interesting composition as well as a suggestive content (although vaguer in its communication than the section front photo) … well, I simply hadn’t seen it.

The reason for this may be I’m just a dumb newspaper reader, or I was distracted by something else at the time. However, other factors could be blamed as well. Like the page design – I’m pretty sure I would have seen this photo if it had been placed above the fold (see below) – or maybe the relative shallowness of the visual communication? This photo’s looking good but perhaps doesn’t say a lot?
You be the judge.
First of all, I think it’s an interesting example of how our mind – or at least my mind – works.