mario garcia
Opinion pages Traditionally, opinion pages are the last to get looked at in a redesign project. Yet, editorial/opinion pages are some of the strongest in terms of content; it is there that a newspaper exposes its soul, convinces its readers of what routes to follow in daily life. In the redesign of the San Jose Mercury News the editors really wanted to update their opinion pages, to make them useful and attractive to younger readers. To achieve this, we allowed for horizontal placement of the editorial at the top of the page. For reasons that have to do with tradition, most newspapers run editorials vertically to the left. Eighty-five percent of all newspapers follow that model. Yet readers know nothing about “set patterns” for editorial pages. They simply know that these are the newspaper’s opinion pieces. To design editorial pages that set the pages apart:
Use bolder fonts in conjunction with lighter ones.
Use a photograph or illustration whenever possible.
Inject quotes and highlights to attract scanning readers. Sometimes editorial headlines are abstract; a quote may be more specific. Write more direct headlines! Remember that if the “opinion” of the designer is to be included, it should be expressed through white space. 100
pure design
Inviting in the reader: For a proposed Spanish daily edition of the Dallas Morning News, we abandoned the editorial on the left, columns on the right, and textdriven architecture. Instead, illustration dominates the page, main editorial runs across the top of the page, and columns are short, allowing for white space.
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