mario garcia
The look of North America Newspaper designers worldwide watch North American newspapers, especially the dailies, with great interest. It was the American newspaper that first emphasized “makeup” in the 1950s, when type foundries such as Morganthaler and Linotype published newsletters and special reports on page layout to promote their newly created alphabets. American professor Edmund C. Arnold with his legendary Arnold Axioms—such as “functionalism over decoration”—emerged as one of the earliest gurus in the field. And American universities were among the first to introduce newspaper design as an academic discipline within journalism schools. All of these are reasons why the North American newspaper has gained a reputation for being design-conscious. And, truly, during the 1970s and early 1980s, when color was first introduced to a vast number of dailies, one could perceive a real sense of style and design experimentation. With color came new ways of looking at everything from typographic use for headlines and text, to better organization of content to clearer labels. Then, sadly, a sameness overtook the market. Newspapers in different parts of the country adopted the same color palettes regardless of their surroundings. Color weather maps dominated; promo boxes appeared on papers with barely enough pages to warrant them. With few exceptions, newspapers remained in that
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mold into the early part of the 1990s. Finally, during the last five years, some have begun to return to their roots, capturing elements of their past, such as a symbol for a logo, a certain color line, or a vertical navigator for the front page. Undoubtedly, the United States is still the place to turn to if one wishes to see well-designed newspapers: The New York Times (especially the Sunday edition); The Philadelphia Inquirer; The Minneapolis Star Tribune; The Wall Street Journal (see Weekend Journal); The Atlanta Constitution (index page, Internet sections); The Dallas Morning News (newly redesigned, modern, crisp, but looking very much like a major city newspaper should); The Charlotte Observer (showing that a medium size newspaper can make photos and text coexist). Further north, the Canadians have created some top-of-the-line newspapers with design that is among the best in the world. Standouts are the National Post (past and present meet in a new newspaper) and The Globe and Mail (great typographic touches). A newly inventive period for the design of North American newspapers is due soon. Hopefully this new era will usher in an openness to smaller formats, more functional use of indexes and navigation, and greater experimentation with advertising positioning. 
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