SNDSmag 2013|2

SNDSMagazine Magazine

2013|2

Take a walk on the wrong side 6-15 Let’s do some good stuff 3 The best Wrong award show in the world 4 Chronicles from an iceflake 16-19 Phil0sophical cartoon 19 Think visually 20-21 Design responsibly 22-24 SvD’s new look – a tribute to text 26-28 The faces of Swedish news 29 The perfect picture 30-31 Hear the story behind the pictures 31 Failure is good for success 32

SWEDEN

NorWAy

SNDS.orG

President Anders Tapola Smålandsposten, S-351 70 Växjö, Sweden Tel.: +46 470 770 686 E-mail: anders.tapola@smp.se

Lill Mostad Fredriksstad Blad Stortorvet 3, N-1601 Fredrikstad Norway Tel. +47 932 09 367 E-mail: lill.mostad@f-b.no

Web-editor Kartin Hansen Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, Grøndalsvej 3, DK-8260 Viby J, Denmark Tel.: +45 87 38 38 38 / 31 07 E-mail: kartin.hansen@jp.dk

Secretary Lars Andersson Upsala Nya Tidning, Box 36, S-751 03 Upsala, Sweden Tel.: +46 18-478 16 79 E-mail: lars.andersson@unt.se FINLAND Communication Stefani Urmas Aamulehti, Itäinenkatu 11, FI-33100 Tampere, Finland E-mail: stefani.urmas@aamulehti.fi

DENMArK Business Manager/ Treasurer Frank Stjerne JP/Politikens Hus, Rådhuspladsen 37, DK-1785 Copenhagen V, Denmark Tel.: +45 33 47 23 99 E-mail: frank.stjerne@jppol.dk SNDS Secretariat Lone Jürgensen Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, Grøndalsvej 3, DK-8260 Viby J, Denmark Tel.: +45 87 38 38 38 / 31 08 E-mail: lone.jurgensen@jp.dk

SNDS MAGAZINE

BEST oF SCANDINAvIAN NEWS DESIGN Chairman of the Competition Committee Flemming Hvidtfeldt Berlingske Media, Vesterbrogade 8, DK-8800 Viborg, Denmark Tel.: +45 20 91 17 52 E-mail: flhv@stiften.dk SUBSTITUTES For THE BoArD Søren Nyeland, Politiken, Denmark Pieta Forssell-Nieminen, Keskisuomalainen, Finland Petra villani, Sydsvenskan, Sweden

SNDSMagazine Magazine

2013|2

Editor, Art Director Lars Pryds Mob.: +45 30 53 87 14 E-mail: pryds@mac.com Co-editor, Journalist DJ Lisbeth Tolstrup Mob.: +45 51 32 89 62 E-mail: mamamanus@mac.com

SNDSMagazine 2013|2

SNDS Magazine editorial office Østerbrogade 158, 3. TH., DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark

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ISSN 1901-8088

Read SNDS Magazine as e-magazine: E www.snds.org/magazine

Print: Svendborg Tryk www.svendborgtryk.dk Typography: SNDS Magazine is set in Myriad Pro, Myriad Pro Condensed and Adobe Jenson Pro and designed in Adobe Indesign for Macintosh.

Articles and ideas for SNDS Magazine and SNDS.orG are most welcome. Please contact us if you have any tips or ideas.

SNDS Magazine is published four times a year, in March, June, September and December.

Deadlines: 15 February, 15 May, 15 August, and 15 November.

Take a walk on the wrong side 6-15 Let’s do some good stuff 3 The best Wrong award show in the world 4 Chronicles from an iceflake 16-19 Phil0sophical cartoon 19 Think visually 20-21 Design responsibly 22-24 SvD’s new look – a tribute to text 26-28 The faces of Swedish news 29 The perfect picture 30-31 Hear the story behind the pictures 31 Failure is good for success 32

The front page shows the true colour of the SNDS WRONG conference in Copenhagen, October 10-11, 2013. WRONG logo design by Sami Valtere; deconstruction of it by SNDS Magazine. Sorry, Sami, something must have gone wrong …

See more about WRONG on pages 6–15.

Published by: Society for News Design Scandinavia E www.snds.org

SNDS is on Facebook: E facebook.com/sndscandinavia

SNDS is on twitter: E @sndstwit

SNDS Magazine 2013|2 Editorial

Let’s do some good stuff Art for art’s sake Money for God’s sake – 10cc, How dare you!, 1975 n There’s

much wisdom to be found in the rock’n roll lyrics from the 1970ies – a favourite of ours, as regular readers of this column may have noticed. For instance, the words above from 10cc mirror our life as news designers: On one side, we want to make our designs and illustrations as great as possible, seen from an artistic view; on the other we are in the business to make money. There could be a conflict in this – as great design (or great art) takes time and resources to produce.

But it need not be a conflict. Design is one of the parameters readers judge our products by, and if the design works properly, it can turn into good business – or “Money, for God’s sake”.

The printed newspapers may have a hard time in today’s media landscape, but although all publishers say that their main focus is on the new platforms, the paper product is at the core of (almost) everybody’s identity.

Svenska Dagbladet launched a redesigned paper recently (see page 26-28), and Helsingin Sanomat has a new “HS DNA” which was clearly developped with the newspaper as one of its most important cornerstones. However, there are many cornerstones – in creative director Sami Valtere’s words: “Each product should look true to its voice and the products together form a solid family.”

Meet the whole HS family and read how the redesign process redesigned Sami Valtere on page 22-24.

Another way to use design as a business tool is by organizing your workflow in new ways. Companies with many different publications try to cut costs by streamlining the design of similar products – but the artistry lies in the ability to make them look different while holding more or less the same content. See how MittMedia accomplished this, in Ole Munk’s report from the “melting iceflake” on page 16-19. His tale is a fascinating one, touching many aspects of the design processes – from the basic functionality of a headline typeface to the value of engaging employees, managers and customers alike.

Wrong pages Otherwise, in this issue we get the first glimpse of the magnificent speakers who have already signed up for the WRONG conference in October. Look for the pink colour – and you’ll find those chaotic pages in the beginning of the magazine. The pink (or 100% magenta, to be precise), along with the heavy stencil typeface, is the DNA of the WRONG conference, which will be the RiGHt place to be on October 10-11, 2013. Save the dates.

The speakers are also more right than wrong and include creative directors vanessa Wyse from the free weekly magazine The Grid in toronto (World’s Best Designed newspaper in 2012 and 2013) and richard Turley from

Bloomberg Businessweek. He is the man behind the magazine’s redesign, which has been described as “pushing the boundaries of traditional newsweekly and business magazine design”.

You can also meet type designer Paul Barnes, who will talk about designing typefaces for Oprah Winfrey and Puma; Javier Errea, who calls himself a newspaper warrior; Philip ytournel and Mads Zacho from Politiken, who will cover the Rosklide Festival with nothing much but an iPad each; design consultants Pål A Berg, who managed to get ten Swedish editorsin-chief to agree, and ole Munk, who will tell us about the MittMedia project mentioned above. Read much more on page 6-15 and follow snds.org for additional speaker announcements.

There’s more for you, enjoy what you find. And let graphic design critic and author Steven Heller reassure us about, and guide us into, the future of our industry, from an interview in 2010: “Graphic methods of communication will continue to be used ten, twenty maybe even 100 years from now.

Designers need to figure out a means to make what they do today relevant for tomorrow. Other than that, my idea of the future is determined by our ultimate mortality. Let’s all do some good stuff before we are selected for the hereafter.” * Have a great summer! n Lisbeth Tolstrup & Lars Pryds Editors, SNDS Magazine

* Heller, Steven: An Expanding Universe (2010). In: Camuffo, Giorgio & Maddalena Dalla Mura (ed.): Graphic Design Worlds/Words.

Milano: Electa (2011).

Best of Scandinavian News Design book and dvd SNDSMagazine 2013|2

Back issues of the SNDS competition catalogue from previous years are still available. Contact Lone Jürgensen at lone.jurgensen@jp.dk for info and prices and to order your copy of the book and/or DVD with winning pages.

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Note: Shown are the five most recent issues of the book – books from earlier years are also available. Some issues may not include the option of a dvd.

The best Wrong award show in the world The competition this year has a lot of news to offer.

Come to the award show to see who won the prizes.

WINNErS Dagbladet Magasinet, Sunnuntaisuomalainen, and Hallingdølen are among this year’s Best of Scandinavian News Design winners. Join us in Copenhagen and see what kind of awards these entries have won. Photo: Lars Aarøe.

Flemming Hvidtfeldt flhv@stiften.dk

SNDSMagazine 2013|2

n The

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Best of News Design Scandinavia competition is still developing. This year the bronze prizes were dropped in the print categories, but two brand new prizes were introduced. One for print and one in the online competition.

The new print award is called “Best Detail” and is nominated by the jury amongst all the entries in the competition. The new online award is named “Best Designed Online News Media in Scandinavia”. The winner in this category was nominated by the jury amongst

entries in the “Overall site design” and “Overall Cross Platform”. taking away the bronze awards did not mean that the number of prizes to be handed out this year became smaller than the other years. On the contrary.

This year the number of gold medals to be handed out will be the highest ever, as will also the number of silver medals.

The two juries were in particular asked to look for great entries from smaller media houses across Scandinavia. And they did find nice and good entries which were awarded properly.

We had an exiting four days evaluation in Billund in February. The competition committee was very satisfied

with the number of entries this year – a whopping 763 entries in print and 68 entries in online. And we were especially pleased that the quality was so high both in the online and the printcompetition. For the two competitions combined, we found a total of 91 winners. And i promise you that the award show this year will be the best ever.

Be there for the conference to find out who won the right stuff – see you in Copenhagen, October 10-11. n This year’s winners will be announced on the WRONG conference, Oct. 11-10, 2013: E www.snds.org/wrong

the Newspaper is

ReboRn welcome digital

CCI EuropE A/S . www.ccieurope.com

10–11 October 2013

TAKE A WALK ON THE WRONG SIDE Our industry went wrong because we tried to do everything right.

This conference will focus on all those designers who deliberately did something wrong and suddenly hit something right.

Like the Grid from Toronto!

Come to Copenhagen and take a walk on the wrong side with some courageous speakers in October.

We are still negotiating with obvious speakers, but please feel free to report any wrong speaker you heard of!

snds.org/wrong

What’s wrong in Scandinavia?

Well – nothing much, necessarily, but our industry went wrong because we tried to do everything right. This year’s SNDS conference, entitled Wrong, will focus on all those designers and visual journalists who deliberately did something wrong and suddenly hit something right.

Over the next pages, we will present some of the magnificant speakers who have already signed up to share their secrets with us – where did they go wrong? – and what did they learn from failures or mistakes? That said, we will be very surprised if they don’t include a few of their successful projects as well.

Join us in Copenhagen

october 10-11, 2013.

Much more info will be posted along the way on snds.org and on facebook.com/sndscandinavia Pål A. Berg Berg Media

“Ten newspapers Pål A. Berg is a design consultant at Berg Media, working with design/presentation, strategy, digital media and efficient production of newspaper and magazine pages. He previously worked as subeditor at Vårt Land (1989-94),– one design: subeditor in the design/infographics department at Verdens Gang (19962004); editor for development (2005-08) and later Editor-in-chief at Haug-Same, same esunds Avis (2008-11). Project manager for developing a shared framework/ newspaper design at Edda Media – but (2012).

President of SNDS, Society for News Design Scandinavia (1999different.

2003).

Jury member in SNDS Best of Scandinavian News DeHow on sign (2000-02, 2010), Årets norske avissidekonkurranse (2005-2009), and SND World’s Best Designed earth did Newspaper (2006). we do it?” www.bergmedia.no Creating a shared newspaper design and template system for 10 newspapers.

The need for unique local pages is much smaller than you would think. n it’s a myth that pages will be much better if you start from scratch … n n

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speaker

SNDSMagazine 2013|2

n

n

n

“ Ugly papers are always more exciting than elegant ones.

I choose them first! By the way, who knows what ugly means?”

Javier Errea

Errea Comunicación n Frustrated

novelist/writer. n Barça supporter. n 21k Runner. warrior :))) n Founder and Principal of ErreaCom, a news design studio based in Pamplona, Spain. n Journalism graduate. n Former reporter, editor, AME News, AME Visuals in different dailies. n Associate Professor at the School of Communications, University of Navarra, Spain. n President of SNDE, Regional Director SND Spain & Mediterranean n Chairman of Malofiej Graphics Summit and Competition n Company’s mission: Pro Active assistance to news storytellers. n Newspaper

Some awards given Best to El Economista (Madrid), Eleftheros Tipos (Athens), Expresso (Lisbon, twice), i (Lisbon), Dagens Nyheter (Stockholm) n Europe (Local & Regional) Best Designed to Diario de Notícias (Pamplona), Diari de Balears (Palma de Majorca), Heraldo de Aragón (Zaragoza) n Europe (National) Best Designed to Expresso (Lisbon), Eleftheros Tipos (Athens), i (Lisbon).

n SND World

other newspapers&magazines&websites recently designed or redesigned n Les Echos (Paris) n Courrier International (Paris) n La Nación (Buenos Aires) n Malayala Manorama (india) n Jornal de Notícias (Porto), Libération (Paris) n The Independent (London) n HBL (Helsinki) n La Tercera (Santiago Chile) n El Diario de Hoy (El Salvador) n Al Bayan (Dubai).

speaker Javier Errea is a passionate journalist and perhaps one of the world’s most famous news design consultants with a very impressive record of redesigns.

He is the director of ErreaCom in Pamplona, Spain, a studio that concentrates on newspapers, publishing and websites. Javier Errea has clients all over the world, small and big newspapers and has won all the prestigious design awards there are. Currently, Javier Errea is working on El Nuevo Día (San Juan de Puerto Rico) Bergens Tidende (Bergen), Diario de Noticias (Spain), Yaracuy al Día (Venezuela).

SNDSMagazine 2013|2

www.erreacomunicacion.com

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speaker

“Why in 2011 would anyone try to create something new in print media? Were we crazy?

Probably. But we soon discovered that by creating an environment where risk taking took part of the culture, anything was possible.� vanessa Wyse

SNDSMagazine 2013|2

Creative Director, The Grid, toronto

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n Originally from Australia, Vanessa Wyse is the Creative Director of The Grid in toronto, Canada. The Grid is a weekly city magazine, free and printed on newsprint, that is constantly pushing the boundaries of what a reader should expect from a free urban weekly. Our goal is to capture and celebrate the energy and vibe of the city. in only two years, the hybrid publication was named one of the Worlds Best Designed Newspapers

by SND in both 2012 and 2013, as well as numerous other awards in both the magazine and newspaper categories.

The Grid has also been recognized with awards from SPD and Canadian National Magazine Awards. Previous to The Grid, Vanessa has designed for numerous magazines including Report on Business magazine and Cosmopolitan Australia.

www.thegridto.com

Paul Barnes

Commercial type n Paul Barnes is a graphic designer specializing in

the fields of lettering, typography, type design and publication design. He is a partner with Christian Schwartz in the internationally acclaimed typefoundry, Commercial type. in the early 1990s he worked for Roger Black in New York where he was involved in redesigns of many magazines. He later returned to America to be art director of the music magazine Spin.

Since 1995 he has lived and worked in London.

He has formed a long term collaboration with Peter Saville, which has resulted in such diverse work as identities for Givenchy, ‘Original Modern’ for Manchester, the England football kit and the logo for Kate Moss.

He has designed typefaces for the National trust in England, the numbers for Puma at the 2010 World Cup and most recently the numbers for the England football team for Umbro. For Commercial type he has co designed Publico with Schwartz, and independently Austin, Dala Floda, Dala Moa and Marian.

Following the redesign of the Guardian, as part of the team headed by Mark Porter, Barnes was awarded the Black Pencil from the D&AD. They were also nominated for the Design Museum ‘Designer of the Year’. in September 2006, with Schwartz he was named one of the 40 most influential designers under 40 in Wallpaper*. A year later the Guardian named him as one of the 50 best designers in Britain. Last year Barnes and Schwartz designed Helsingin Sanomat’s two new typeface families, Helsingin and Sanomat.

New type for News

Commercial Type make type for newspapers, such as the Guardian and the Helsingin Sanomat, which stay true to the rich heritage of newspaper typefaces, but at the same time show the influences of a wider world of letters and graphic design.

Paul Barnes will talk about

how making type for magazines such as O, The Oprah Winfrey magazine, Vanity Fair through to the numbers on the back of Puma’s football shirts at the 2010 World Cup, as well as an understanding of the history of letterforms and type, can make new and interesting typefaces for newspapers.

speaker

www.commercialtype.com | www.moderntypography.com

SNDSMagazine 2013|2

Barnes has also been an advisor and consultant on numerous publications, notably Wallpaper*, Harper’s Bazaar and frieze. His interest in the modern and vernacular is encompassed in his type design ranging from the contemporary such as for Björk, through to the extensive British modern, Brunel as seen in Condé Nast Portfolio. Whilst consultant to the Guardian he designed Guardian Egyptian with Christian Schwartz.

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richard Turley

www.businessweek.com

Creative director, Bloomberg Businessweek.

“Everything I do is wrong.

I’m increasingly unsure that there is a right way of doing things”

Richard turley joined Bloomberg Businessweek in 2010 to work on a complete redesign of the magazine which has been viewed as hit with advertisers, consumers and the media. The redesign has been described as pushing the boundaries of traditional newsweekly and business magazine design. turley came to Bloomberg Businessweek from the Guardian. During his decade-long tenure at the newspaper, he most recently served as art director of G2, the daily features section. in 2003, as a senior designer, he worked closely with the creative director on the newspaper’s lauded redesign.

Prior to joining the Guardian, turley was art director at Seven Magazine. He is the recipient of eight Society of News Design Awards, three American Society of Magazine Editors Awards, two Society of Publication Design Awards, and four Design & Art Direction Awards.

He currently sits on the board of the Society of Publication Designers. turley received a B.A. from Liverpool Art School.

SNDSMagazine 2013|2

n

speaker

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Doing it right in the newsroom “Editorial and design work together very closely. What is perhaps unusual about our process is the geography of our office. We work with editors and designers sitting side by side. So apart from getting on and understanding each other on a personal level, it means that we are aware of each other’s thought processes pretty much the moment they happen. That places design in a central role in the editorial process. […] We constantly swap and exchange layouts, with multiple designers working on any given layout. We aren’t precious about people ‘owning’ layouts. We all try and figure the problems out together. This is probably best illustrated in the way we apply charts to pages: the lead designer of that page / article / section will check the inDesign documents in, after which they are picked up by one of the infographic team who adds the chart, and adjusts and changes the layout as necessary. They will add graphic elements, shift around page architecture, making their work integral to the end page design.”

Richard turley in Eye, Summer 2011

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Knowledge of design workflows and integration of different IT systems is also essential.

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Borlänge • Göteborg • Kristianstad • Lund Malmö • Stockholm • Västerås

ole Munk

Ribergård & Munk

speaker

More WRONG speakers will be announced in the next issue of SNDS Magazine and on

SNDSMagazine 2013|2

snds.org

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Early bird??

registration fee for WroNG VAT (25 %) Before 1 August: € 795 / DKK 5.925 +VAT (25%) + 75 6.6 K DK After 1 August: € 895 / register online at snds.org e at all sessions, Registration includes: Attendanc tea in breaks ee/ coff s, final programme, lunche reception, dinner e com during conference days, wel .org snd at and award show. More info

Foto: Christian hjorth / roskildE FEstival / Pr

in his 20-year career, Ole Munk has worked with more than 100 design and redesign projects. He is going to speak about his most recent and most challenging one, for the Swedish MittMedia corporation. You can read more about this in: Chronicles from an iceflake on pages 16-19.

“Creative solutions may start out as mistakes, by hitting the wrong button or choosing the wrong typeface. you should always be prepared to look at your own work with open eyes and an open mind. Sometimes you get it right without knowing it”

n Ole Munk is a design & communication consultant, graphic designer, and illustrator at Ribergård & Munk, Denmark. He holds an architectural degree from the institute of Visual Communication at the Royal Academy of Arts in Copenhagen. Drew the comic strip Felix 1976-85. Graphic reporter at Politiken 1985-89, lecturer and consultant at the Graphic Arts institute of Copenhagen 1989-94, graphics director at Politiken 1994-95, managing director of Ribergaard & Munk Graphic Design (www.ribmunk.dk) since July 1995. President of the Society for News Design/Scandinavia 1997-99. Awarded the Commemorative Prize of Knud V Engelhardt (Knud V Engelhardts Mindelegat) 2003. www.ribmunk.dk

de fautes

www.politiken.dk

Philip ytournel n 40

years old n Graduated from the Design School in Kolding. n At Politiken since 2007 n Philip is an experimenting cartoonist delivering to all platforms. Recently he got 33 days to deliver a Graphic Novel on 16 pages (see page 19 in this magazine). His storytelling cartoons have received more gold medals in the big design competitions.

Mads Zacho Teglskov n 30

years old from The Danish School of Journalism in 2008 n At Politiken since april 2008 n Editor of debate at politiken.dk n Also responsible for Politiken’s presence on social media platforms. n Has previously worked in broadcasting and also produced web-tv and worked as an investigative reporter. n Winner of the Kravling Award for journalism students in 2008. n Graduated

SNDSMagazine 2013|2

and multireporter Zacho will be on an experimental mission in July. Only equipped with two iPads they’ll report from the muddy – or occasionally sunny – Roskilde Festival. They plan to send reassuring and idyllic messages to the nervous parents from the camps about mud, garbage and tilted tents. They might even comment on the music. in other words: it can only go WRONG! Will they ever come back and tell us their story?

journaux”

speaker

roSKıLDE n Cartoonist Ytournel

dans les

speaker

pas assez

“I’m happy to have at least one reliable friend with me ... the iPad! My semi French partner ytournel, however, will be a challenge”

“Il n’y a

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Chronicles from an iceflake Working with a ground-breaking media development project in the heart of Sweden ole Munk ole@ribmunk.dk

The current situation of printed newspapers can be compared to standing on a big iceflake that is slowly melting. Around you, new iceflakes are being formed, but they are yet too small to keep you floating. one way to survive until they grow big enough: reduce weight.

Ribergård & Munk was appointed to create a new design concept for all MittMedia publications – on digital and print, paid as well as free – it was clear to everyone that consolidation would be one of the objects of this project. Dealing with umpteen different visual toolboxes as well as significant variation in work routines, organization, and the use of the NewsPilot production system is simply not a rational way to run a media corporation in 2013 … and the perspective of future staff cuts due to the ice melting (read: declining circulation and ad revenue) had convinced the MittMedia directors that producing quality newspapers would soon become impossible unless work procedures were rationalized.

SNDSMagazine 2013|2

n When

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Preparing for the future This project was, however, sparked by a second ambition as well. At our first meeting with project manager Daniel Bertils in April 2012, he shared with us his vision of a future news organization which has the story, not the publishing platform, as its revolving axis. Print, web, mobile, tablet, and audio are merely seen as different communication channels (to be mastered by all reporters, in the best of worlds) and the desk becomes the hub where decisions are being made on how to cover a story and which channels should be used to report it.

PAGE STrUCTUrE All MittMedia pages are vertically divided into eight modules, based on the Swedish TU ad standards. Each module equals twelve baselines and all typographical measures are corresponding to the 3.75 mm baseline grid. The ”start” column to the far left has been reserved for navigation elements and contact info.

This is preparing for a future in which new platforms and narrative techniques can be expected to show up every once in a while. With Daniel’s model, their emergence won’t have to force dramatic changes upon the basic structure of the organization; instead

they should be welcomed as new opportunities, new channels being added to the media spectrum.

Beyond comparison, this is the most ambitious project we have ever been involved in, and we soon realized that it called for unconventional measures.

oPINIoN PAGES Even though all MittMedia papers will share the same basic page structure, they are not going to look the same. The ”start” column will be treated individually and the planned variation of colour and macro typography will further enhance the differences.

“Mission is possible” Nine design anchor persons, one from each MittMedia editorial department, joined Daniel Bertils and Ribergård & Munk’s consultants in a “formgrupp”.

The group members made preparations for our first workshop in Gävle, in early September 2012, by mapping their existing design and writing “mission statements” which described the kind of visual qualities they, and their editors, wanted to see in a future version of their paper. The scope was wide, ranging from Gefle Dagblad’s DN-like exclusivity to Dagbladet Sundsvall’s “kvällstidningslook”. We analyzed the

differences, looking for the specific components that defined them. What makes one newspaper look upmarket and another one popular?

Our conclusion: From a design point of view, a newspaper page has a top and a bottom layer, the top layer containing the eye-catching elements that provide the newspaper with its visual “tone of voice”. images, colours, headlines and other types of macro typography. Whereas the bottom layer is more like a car engine; the single most important issue is that it works, and users won’t really mind if it is more or less the same nuts and bolts they’ll find when opening the hood of an Audi and a Skoda. in other words, we agreed that quite a lot of the design components could be identical in all the publications, but a few elements were crucial to enabling the individual differences we were looking for.. Colour variation is quite an easy thing to automate, so the macro typography stood out as the obvious challenge. What we needed, we soon realized, was two headline faces which were able to replace one another but, at the same time, looked as different as possible.

Custom headlines We began searching among the 150,000+ typefaces on the market

E

Duplex | Duplex The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Sans Light

Sans Regular

Serif Light

Sans Semibold

Serif Regular

Sans Bold

Serif Semibold

Sans Black

Serif Bold

DUPLEx The new DUPLEX typeface was developed by Commercial Type in New York to meet MittMedia’s special requirements: Two by two, the sans and serif versions can replace one another.

The macro typography will automatically change appearance when moved from one paper to another. The Serif Light matches both Sans Light and Sans Regular.

SNDSMagazine 2013|2

Just to focus on the paid newspapers – which was how we started – squeezing all 18 titles (to turn 19 before the first redesign was launched) into one design uniform was not an option, as several of the papers are competing for the same markets and have devoted readers who would object strongly to the idea that, for instance, Arbetarbladet and Gefle Dagblad should suddenly look alike.

So how do you create a system where things can look different even though they are in fact the same … to the extent that all the contents of any newspaper page must be able to migrate from one publication to another and automatically change appearance, without human intervention?

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ONSDAG 8 MAJ 2013

NYA SAMHÄLLET

ÖLHALLEN I SUNDSVALL DRABBAD AV FÖRSENING

Ve c ka 1 9 • Å r g 1 1 3 • N r 1 0 3 • P r i s 1 5 : –

Skatteplanering på Norra Kajen Sundsvalls kommun sparade 1,8 miljoner kronor Sundsvalls kommun skatteplanerade när de startade Norra kajen Exploatering tillsammans med Norrlands-

kronor följde med på köpet.

– Jag tycker det är upprörande. Kommuner borde föregå med gott exempel, säger statssekreterare Mikael Lundholm på finansdepartementet.

SIDORNA 6–7

Nu har vi byggt färdigt.

Hela DalaRNas TIDNING

Göran Greider: ”Vad sjunger jag om? Detta!

Ja, jag kvittrar hellre i en blommande hägg än jag twittrar.”

66 nya vindsnurror. I Jädraås står det nu 66 klara vindkraftverk. I tre år har arbetet hållit på. Många kom till invigningen och tittade.

Falun

sidan 8

Misstänkt för mordförsök.

Mannen försökte mörda sin sambo, anser åklagaren. Han ska ha bundit och piskat henne och gett henne elstötar.

o n s dag 2 9 m a j 2 0 1 3 • Å R G Å N G 9 5 • 1 5 K R

”Vi fick hybris” Peace & Love-konkursen sidorna 4, 5, 6, 7, 29

aVesta

sidan 13

Bebisar i älgskogen. Nadja och Nina är de nyaste invånarna i Sälenfjällens älgpark.

Västerdalarna

sidan 15

Ingen leverans. Kritik mot bokförlag. Konsumentvägledaren: ”Sätt hårt mot hårt.”

säter

sidan 14

Fem Leksandskvinnor. Anna Götlind speglar 200 år genom deras liv.

kultur

sidorna 24-25

Är du sjuksköterska och letar nya utmaningar?

Välkommen till

ÖPPET HUS

Tid: 11 juni kl. 14–19 Plats: Hotel Bergmästaren, Falun

Proffice Care är ett av Nordens största vårdbemanningsföretag som erbjuder jobb för läkare och sjuksköterskor. Läs mer på www.profficecare.se

SNDSMagazine 2013|2

FroNTPAGES In the new MittMedia design concept, page 1 is where the differences between individual titles should be exposed most clearly. For instance, Falu-Kuriren is conceived to be a hyper-local paper whereas Dala-Demokraten, FK’s rival in the city of Falun and a newcomer to the MittMedia family, has a more regional profile and a strong brand on opinion and culture.

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and also trawled our network for typographical advice. it turned out only two existing typeface families had the features we were looking for. One, Hoefler & Frere Jones’ Proteus quartet, contains beautiful but eccentric display fonts which we couldn’t see as potential headline faces in Swedish local dailies.

And the other one, Compatil from Linotype, maybe ought to be re-named “Compromise” since the typeface literally exposes all the problems a type designer will run into when trying to square the typographical circle (because that’s the true nature of this challenge)

… in particular, the difficulties of achieving even and satisfactory spaces between characters. is there a chance there might be time and budget for a custom project, asked our good friend and frequent partner from previous projects, Christian Schwartz. And it turned out there was a chance, as both we and our client now saw the headline typography as a determining factor. Over a period of eight months, Commercial Type developed a brand new typeface family, consisting of sans and serif styles which are directly interchangeable even

though they could hardly look more unlike each other, one being a noble antique and the other one a tough, narrow grotesque. Duplex was born.

Going on customer safari Let’s go back to the melting ice for a while. As already mentioned, this whole operation is much more than just a print project. Other MittMedia workgroups were devoted to contents, web publishing, work procedures, etc., with the ambition to figure out how to develop the new “iceflakes” – all kinds of digital operations, basically – in or-

design graphic novel Lars Pryds pryds@mac.com

Between noblemen and tough guys From September 2012 to April 2013, we ran five workshops with the form group, gradually working our way toward consensus on basic page structures as well as guidelines for individual differences. Some group members were facing a special challenge: in the four places where MittMedia owns competing titles, agreement had to be reached as to which paper should take on the “noble” attitude and which one should become the toughie. in the city of Sundsvall, this discussion became kind of a dilemma as the natural candidate for the “noble” part, Sundsvalls Tidning, had been redesigned shortly before our project was initiated, introducing a bold and quite heavy typography. Suddenly switching to a much more upmarket design might send the wrong signals to St’s readers and cause confusion among the staff.

So we had to work out how to make its competitor look even more tabloid – to match Dagbladet’s editorial ambitions as well as emphasizing the difference – while making only subtle adjustments to the St design.

February 2013 saw the formation

of the “mallgrupp” (template group), the sharpest and most hard-working gang of tech crunchers i have come across in my career. Alexander, Jonas, Lars, Jakob, torkel, the two Peters, and Conny – each of them an unchallenged it super-user on his own home ground – joined forces to transform the crude design framework we had created into a fully operational news engine, based on Adobe inDesign 6 and a brand new version of the NewsPilot production system. ready to run Three months later, we were ready to run. A completely revamped Dagbladet and a modified version of Sundsvalls Tidning hit the streets 8 May and the response was exactly the one we had been hoping for: Dagbladet’s readers were happy, as their paper now looked much better and its visual appearance matched the editorial policy, and the changes in Sundsvalls Tidning went on almost unnoticed, with just a few readers actively commenting on the fact that the body text had become easier to read.

Dalarnas Tidningar and the new-kid-in-MittMedia-town, DalaDemokraten, were next, and Spring Season ended with the June 5 launch of Tidningen Ångermanland and Örnsköldsviks Allehanda in the new MittMedia costume. Nine paid papers are on our after-summer list and freesheets and digital will be next. All of this to be powered by the same NewsPilot engine – a prerequisite for turning Daniel Bertil’s desk vision into reality. We might not be able to keep the ice from melting, but everybody at MittMedia now feels a lot better prepared to meet n the media climate changes.

Ole Munk is a design & communication consultant, graphic designer, and illustrator, managing director of Ribergaard & Munk Graphic Design, former President of SNDS (1997-99). He writes about all things visual on his blog Munkytalk.

Ole Munk will be a speaker at the Wrong conference in Copenhagen, October 10-11, 2013 (See page 14).

E www.munkytalk.com E www.ribmunk.dk

Philosophical cartoon

n On

the 5th of May 2013 the Danish philosopher and religious author Søren Kierkegaard would have been 200 years old. Across the country he was celebrated as one of Denmark’s great sons, and to make the story of his life a little easier to dive into for the contemporary public, Politiken asked Philip Ytournel, the paper’s cartoonist, to turn it into a cartoon.

Baffled at first, Ytournel started working with what – after three months of work – materialized in a 16 pages hand-drawn supplement, published the day before the philosopher’s birthday.

People who are familiar with Kierkegaard’s writings may have been surprised by some of the drawings – but, as Ytournel says, in a small video on Politiken’s website: “This is difficult stuff, so i thought we should start with something everybody knows about, like oral sex or a duck talking about croutons in his salad”.

So – an old philosopher translated into a modern graphic novel, in a not so modern media – the printed newspaper. But would this kind of storytelling work as a digital product?

No, says the cartoonist – the fact alone that the story runs across the pages in three different, horisontal tracks makes it impossible to transfer to a pdf or the internet.

Ole Munk, design consultant and himself a former cartoonist, agrees: ”Philip’s graphic novel succeeds not only as a unique and very ambitious experiment with the genre – it actually communicates. For the first time in my life, i got the feeling that i might be able to understand a bit of what n Kierkegaard is about”.”

Backstage with Philip ytournel (video): E http://bit.ly/10DRLYB

SNDSMagazine 2013|2

der to make them economically viable, strong enough to carry the weight of future local journalism. And in August 2012, every one of MittMedia’s 1000 employees got an invitation to apply for a seat in the “framtidsverkstad” (future lab), a unique combination of business development, cultural reinvention and professional development, designed for Mittmedia by Helsinki-based LearningMiles.

Customer insight is being generated through modern anthropological approaches such as “customer safaris” in which the participants observe and engage with customers to understand their contexts. Another building block of the concept is the recognition of “personal reinvention” as an increasing power for engaging employees, managers and customers alike.

Despite decisions to downsize the workforce by 15 percent over three years, the new initiatives and the “framtidsverkstad” in particular have fostered an intensive can-do atmosphere inside MittMedia, and teamwork across traditional borders between the newsdesk, sales and it has become very visible.

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Today we discuss a lot if print media will die or not.

I think this is the wrong discuss覺on: Stories will survive, so we should rethink how we tell them.

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Saulo Santana Art Director Bild am Sonntag Axel Springer AG Germany

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Think visually n Almost

echoing the old Ringo Starr song “Act naturally”, Brazilian born art director and news designer Saulo Santana wants us all to think visually. it’t’s all about telling stories – well, you probably know that already, but often enough we forget that some of the great storytelling techniques are illustration, infographics and the visually based layout or page design.

Saulo Santana, who has left his warm home country to work for Bild am Sonntag in Germany, has won numerous awards for his creative designs, including an SND Best of Sports Design 2013 for the Messi spread shown below.

He has also served as a judge in this year’s SND competition, and when asked about his impressions of the submitted entries he summed up his advice for creating infographics with these words: “in infographics, i have seen more design than journalism. When it comes to a newspaper, an infographic has to follow the same rules as a written story. Show respect for your readers and think about the story – think about journalism – first. We’re making newspapers not pieces for designers.”

Now you can hear him reveal some of his secrets, when he visits Scandinavia by invitation of Ole Munk and the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Copenhagen. Saulo Santana will give a presentation here at the school on the September 11 (easy date to remember!) at 3pm-5pm, showing some of his work and elaborating on his ideas of visual storytelling.

There will be a small entry fee for sitting in on the presentation.

More info (online video) at http://bit.ly/16Zroyn or (soon): http://www.dmjx.dk – or by contacting Ole Munk at ole@ribmunk.dk

September 11, 2013, 3pm-5pm Saulo Santana: Think visually n A presentation about visual storytelling n Danish School of Media and Journalism, Copenhagen

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–pryds

21

Design responsibly Sami Valtere, design director of Helsingin Sanomat, tells us how the redesign process redesigned him.

CovErS Opening spread of section one and special section covers.

Sami valtere sami.valtere@hs.fi

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n two

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years ago i was given three things: 1: i was given the position as Helsingin Sanomat’s Design Director and 2: i was given a mandate to design whole of our product line and brand identity. (We’ll get to number 3 in a minute).

Before this i had worked ten years in Helsingin Sanomat. Designed a lot of things. Magazines, websites, applications, ads, books etc. But until that moment my designs had been mostly for my own amusement. i guess i was more interested in having a good time with my assignments than thinking too much about the end user – the reader.

My attitude towards my work start-

KUUKAUSILIITE Cover and inside pages of the monthly magazine.

ed to change during my year in China – where i did the design concept work two years ago. i became more and more aware of the most important thing that i had been given – 3: Responsibility.

A responsibility to our readers. A responsibility to our advertisers. And with these two a responsibility to my dear co-workers.

Simply put: if i fail in my work, we will lose customers. if we lose customers, we lose money. if we lose money, we will cut down resources… And my coworkers happen to be those resources.

Helsingin Sanomat is important to its readers. it has a very special status in finnish society. it stands alone as a national quality daily paper. The Helsingin Sanomat brand is strong.

My responsibility is not to mess this up.

We are in a situation where our customers are leaving us. And the ones that have not done so yet will definitely follow if we don’t get our act together.

We need to emphasize our strenghts, absolute reliability and quality. But with that we must make it easily accessible and visually inviting.

How? and how?

Well – how do we achieve visual reliability? By being as truthful in the design as we are in the text.

Every visual detail must serve a purpose, as every word should serve a purpose in the text. The design should not be used to market the content falsely, as headlines should be truthful to body text. Design and content should present itself to the reader as one.

And then – how do we achieve

E

TEEMA MAGAZINE Cover and article pages of new magazine.

HS oN THE IPAD Cover and article page layouts of the upcoming iPad app.

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BUILDING BLoCKS Helsingin Sanomat’s brand identity is designed with the same principles as journalistic products. Ads, stationary, event structures, everything.

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HS oN THE WEB Cover and article pages of the new hs.fi website.

THE WEB APP Content of daily paper is available also in special web application.

Sami Valtere is design director at Helsingin Sanomat. He studied architecture at Helsinki University of Technology 1995-1998. Before he joined HS, he worked in an advertising agency and in TV-Shop’s warehouse for years. He likes longboarding and his job.

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visual quality? By thinking before acting.

While in Shanghai i ended up developing HS DNA – a design system and a tool that allows me to control the overall design of Helsingin Sanomat product line. it’s basically about how our design reflects spirit of our content.

Each product should look true to its voice and the products together form a solid family.

Some examples of HS DNA designed products you find on these pages. One of the most recently designed products is the tabloid format HS. When i got the basic design ready the responsibility kicked in. i was not absolutely sure that our customers could take all the changes at the same time. Format change seemed big enough change.

From this i got the idea of soft design launch. The first phase of the design was minimalistic, traditional, and visually silent. in the second phase when people were more used to the new format we raised our voice a bit by adding some highlights and increased contrasts. The third phase will take place next year. Then we will introduce the final design. For a while at least.

As i am writing this article Sanoma board sacked our editor-in-chief. The reason for this was said to be “Lack of trust”. Whatever that means. Perhaps a sum of many things, who knows.

But this radical maneuver tells us something about the situation in our business. And like it or not – this is where we stand at the moment: we have to adjust. But most importantly we have to remember and cherish our strengths. Reliability and quality.

The only way a designer can help in this is to make sure that all the design choices are made with reason and only the reader in mind. to make the content as accessible and inviting to our customers no matter what the media or n channel is.

HS oN THE PHoNE The new look of the HS mobile app.

E www.hs.fi

L

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2013

SND

sndlou

2013 NOVEMBER 7-9 • THE ALI CENTER

CHURCHILL DOWNS MUSEUM DERBY PARTY GALT HOUSE HOTEL • DOWNTOWN LOUISVILLE sndlou.com

/sndlou

@sndlou

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SvD’s new look – a tribute to text in early April this year, Svenska Dagbladet launched a new design of the printed paper – and is now a two section newspaper on weekdays with a third section for culture on Sundays.

Sam Sundberg sam.sundberg@svd.se

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n Developing

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a new design takes a long time. Svenska Dagbladet’s (SvD) head of design Anna Thurfjell worked for half a year on this project.

“This is not just a design change, but the biggest change since SvD went tabloid,” she says.

The newspaper business has also changed profoundly during the last ten years. SvD has never had as many readers as today where one million people read the paper in different channels.

Digital platforms like the web, mobile and tablets make the readers demand both high quality and easy access.

“The task for the printed paper

is different, when it lives side by side with all our digital channels. But what Svenska Dagbladet stands for remains the same: Quality journalism is our brand,” says editor-in-chief Lena K. Samuelsson.

One goal in the new design has been to connect the paper to the digital platforms. Therefore, SvD and Näringsliv (“Business”) now have distinct identities on paper exactly as they do on the web. All sections of the paper have been colour coded in order to help readers navigate through the paper no matter how they read it. However, a digital language is not part of the newspaper.

“For a long time, out relationship to the web has been a bit immature. We have been experimenting with designing pages that look like web pages.

That does not feel very modern today. instead, we decided that every channel has its own strengths. And the strength of the paper is not to look like the web.”

Some changes are easy to see: Culture is now part of section one, opinion pages have grown in numbers, and the business section Näringsliv is now on pink paper. Other changes are more subtle. inhouse they talk about a “classic newspaper feeling” and about text as the most important element, even as a graphic one.

SvD’s own typeface Sueca is now used in all channels, both paper and digital, but with different variations.

Svenska Dagbladet uses all serif faces for headlines, whereas Näringsliv has all sans serif headlines, in both cases with an italic variant for lifestyle content.

10 10 TISDAG DEN 5 MARS 2013

SANNA RAYMAN

INTERVJU

LEDARE 04

KULTUR 20

Soran Ismail står upp för Sverige INTERVJU MED SORAN ISMAIL, Nyheter 8

18

08

14

20

18

Minst korrupt

Mest korrupt

2 LEDARE Något viktigare än skolan är svårt att tänka sig

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Julrusning till fjällen.

Erbjudande

Boende julvecka från 585 kr/pers

5 dagar ledigt ger 14 dagar vintersemester.

Läs mer och boka på skistar.com

TORSDAG DEN 21 NOVEMBER 2012

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ABC ABC abc abc 123 123

MIKAEL HOLMSTRÖM

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The new Culture magazine has been designed by Mark Porter, former creative director at the English newspaper the Guardian. He especially likes Svenska Dagbladet’s logotype, designed in in 1960 by Karl-Erik Forsberg inspired by ancient Roman capitals.

“Nowadays most newspapers use the same type designers, so many look the same. But the typeface of the logo has its very own, strong personality,” Mark Porter says.

Above all he enjoyed the possibility to lift the text and show confidence in the readers, which editor-in-chief Lena K Samuelson calls “daring to be qualified”.

“So many people think that readers will lose their concentration. But we had a very clear picture of our readers.

Central park

er

SvD TyPE Svenska Dagbladet has its own distinct typeface, Sueca, designed invaroius weights and styles by Mário Feliciano for the redesign in 2009.

Shown here are Sueca Serif and Sueca Sans. tydligare koppla

They are intelligent people who love culture. They appreciate a strong visual expression, but they also love to read.

So we were never afraid of too many words or letters,” says Mark Porter.

Anna Thurfjell describes the design as a tribute to the text. During this project she has spent most of her time working on the typography. The attentive reader will notice that the size of the body text is a little bigger in the culture supplement. This is a play with with our eyes that gives a magazine-ish feeling in the tabloid format, with the goal to encourage reading.

Dynamics and contrast Anna Thurfjell has also been very keen on creating dynamics and contrasts, with clear differences between big E

20

Superb åkning och försklassigt nöjesliv lockar när Europas jetset flockas i den schweiziska skidorten Verbier. SvD har besökt såväl backarna som nattklubbarna.

04

FOTO: CHRISTOFFER SJÖSTRÖM

1.

BÖRS&MARKNAD Kraftigt fall för gruvbolaget Nordic Mines

2.

3.

4.

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SvD CoLoUrS Svenska Dagbladet’s new colour palette, from top to bottom the colours are used to signal the different sections in the newspaper – on paper as well as online: 1. Opinion (the opinion) 2. Nyheter (the news) 3. Kultur (the culture) 4. Näringsliv (the business) 5. Sport (the sport) 6. Magasinet/bostad (the home&living) 7. Feature (the lifestyle)

5.

6.

7.

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Central park

12

RESOR

27

Hu

13 years of

2000 Svenska Dagbladet changes format from broadsheet to tabloid – as the first of the major daily newspapers in Sweden

2004 After one year of development work, SvD launches the three-sectioned newspaper: Nyheter, Näringslev og Kultur.

2006

SNDSMagazine 2013|2

A new concept for Sundays: New supplements N (Näringsliv) and K (Kultur).

28

and small, between fast and slow, and different temperaments. This demands a flexible form, and to make this possible for the editors in the daily work, the old column system has been dumped.

“Architecture and travelling are priceless sources for inspiration in the design work, the inspiration here which has been a key force in the entire project, was the grid of the Manhattan streets. instead of only columns we now work with a grid system, which is much more flexible, so that articles can be scaled up or down easily,” says Anna Thurfjell.

Moving the culture section into the main book of the paper was a real challenge, but it has added some of the dynamics Anna Thurfjell was looking for: “Now Opinion and Kultur are clear contrasts to the news section. They have completely different tones of voice

in the section. This way it is an advantage to have the culture pages in the first section, and also the larger amount of opinion pages.

Finally, it’s important that the design is not there for its own sake. Opening the SvD, the readers should not think, ‘Aha, what a lot of design’. They should be lured into reading.” n Sam Sundberg is a freelance journalist and columnist at SvD. He has also written the book “Piraterna – De svenska fildelarna som plundrade Hollywood” in cooperation with Anders Rydell.

Sam Sundberg’s website and blog is at www.samsundberg.se This article was previously published in Svenska Dagbladet, 17 April 2013.

E www.svd.se E www.samsundberg.se

2009 Redesign of the whole newspaper. A new typeface, Sueca, designed by Mário Feliciano especially for SvD, is introduced into the pages. New K-section on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

2011 Redesign of SvD.se including a new structure.

2012 Anew design for the business site Nliv.se is launched.

2013 Svenska Dagbladet is redesigned and is now in two sections on weekdays with a new Kultur section on Sundays.

The faces of Swedish news The quarterly magazine #4 from A4-gruppen in Stockholm has published an almost complete list of the typefaces used in Swedish newspapers. it’t’s interesting reading if you love type.

And who doesn’t?

n Benton

Sans and Nimrod Mt. Guardian Sans, Publico, and Publico Banner.

Amplitude, Miller, and Lexicon.

These are the choice of typefaces for, respectively, Filipstads Tidning, Dagens Nyheter, and Upsala Nya Tidning.

AWXt4 (A4-gruppen) has published its spring issue of the #4 magazine, and with it a thorough study the typefaces that are used in newspapers in Sweden. A total of 115 papers have participated, and the result is a four page table showing the name of typeface used for headlines, body, subhead, fact boxes etc. interesting reading, if you agree with the intro for the pages, which states that the choice of typeface is the most inportant visual element in any newspaper’s brand.

AWXt4 conducted similar studies in 1992, 1999, and 2005, and while the earlier results were dominated by experiments with many different typefaces, this year sees a tendency towards

simplicity and less variation, probably as a result of the common design shared by many newspapers owned by the same company.

The research results are accompanied by articles about select papers and a bar graph showing the number of newspapers the different typefaces are used in. Mercury is the clear winner in the body copy category (used in 24 of the 115 papers), whereas Lyon Display is the most popular type for headlines, closely followed by Guardian Sans. in 1992, Bodoni was the top typeface for headlines, used in 43% of the Swedish newspapers. in 2013, Bodoni is no longer on the list. Some diehard old-timers are still around, but especially for headlines the trend seems to favour newcomers – and this focus on new type designs is not a surprise to AWXt4’s founder Pelle Anderson:

“This business is extremely sensitive to trends and lives in constant symbiosis with its advertisers. The day advertisers see the form as old-fashioned, the existence of the paper is threatened.

And then you must also not forget that even the readers like renewals,” he says in the magazine.

Helveti-who?

Want to know how good old Helvetica and the iconic newspaper typeface times perform in Sweden anno 2013?

Head on to a4.se and order your copy of the #4 magazine: bit.ly/17bTsUZ in the magazine there are many more great readings about typography as well as other areas of the publishing business – from the story of the most watched typeface in the New York subway or the special personality of the slab serif, to the schisms of the advertorials seen more and more often in Scandinavian media. n

AWXT4 / A4-gruppen / #4 magazine: E www.a4.se

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Lars Pryds pryds@mac.com

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The perfect picture it’s a heavyweight publication, it covers almost every aspect of (planned) photography, and it’s actually based on a coincidence – coupled with the lifetime experiences of two photographers. Se her! is a very important book about photography and image composition. if you read Danish, go get it.

Lars Pryds pryds@mac.com

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n Rudi

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Hass has been a photographer and an educator in photography for over 40 years, but in 2002 his life changed. in a secondhand bookshop he found an old book by the American photographer William Mortensen (1897-1965), and in it the answer to many of the questions about what makes a photograph – or any composed image – successful.

The following years Rudi Hass dug up other writings by William Mortensen (who was a son of Danish immigrants), who in the 1930ies wrote down his theories about composition, image structure and the aestethic values of photography.

This book, Se her! (Look here!) is

based on these theories, with the addition of Rudi Hass’ own experience, thoughts, and findings.

Three chapters are from the original Mortensen books – but with added explanations and commentaries. Here, Hass’ many years of teaching is clear in the way the book was edited – this is a book that is meant to used, not just a way for the author to leave his mark after a lifetime of working in the industry. Chapter headlines include “Visual design principles”, “The human body in the picture”, and “Photography and creativity”.

With its 500 pages, this is not only a heavy book, but also one you will enjoy for a long time. The instructive illustrations and beautiful photos make the eight chapters and the many subsections very easy to navigate. The examples are both shown and explained

– and all through the book with Mortensen’s basic formula in mind, as described in the beginning of the book: in order to be good, a picture should, 1: catch your attention; 2: fascinate you; and 3: give you pleasure.

Photographers – and their colleagues The goal of this book is simple: to give advice on how to create better pictures – but the way to get there is not so simple. At least, there are many aspects involved, but the book seems to cover just about every single one of them.

Although the topic is photography, many of the principles are universal and can be applied to other areas such as drawing, painting, or even page layout and image handling – the geometry used in, for instance, the cropping of a portrait are the same, regardless of the media it appears in.

photo video interviews Lars Pryds pryds@mac.com

Hear the story behind the pictures yES – There are many beautiful women in this book, illustrating the techniques of cropping, composition, light/shadow, and the golden section.

You should not expect much technical abracadabra, however, and for a comparison of different camera models or other photographic equipment you will have to look elsewhere. There are no quick and dirty Photoshop tricks, although the ethics of “digital plastic surgery” are discussed, and no tips for how to get into the right position as a war zone reporter. The point is that it’s not the camera or the computer that captures or even controls the image – it’s the photographer, you.

This is a book you must own if you are interested in the nature of photography or picture composition.

The many references to art and design makes it usable even if you don’t own a camera, and the author’s enthusiasm for both the subject and for having discovered William Mortensen makes it a joy to read the many pages. n

rudi Hass: Se her! – Billedkomposition for fotografer og andre billedskabere.

500 pages, hard cover, 28 x 23 cm.

Text in Danish.

ISBN: 978-87-92750-06-8 Forlaget Kle·art. DKK 645,-

More info about the book: E www.kleart.dk/se-her

SNDS Magazine no. 1/2103 you could read the story of this year’s Swedish winner of the World Press Photo, Paul Hansen from Dagens Nyheter.

Now you have the possibility to hear him and and other 2013 WPP winners talk about their work.

The organisation behind the competition has interviewed a selection of the winners and posted the small videos (from 4 to 6 minutes each) on the World Press Photo website.

The photographers quietly tell the story behind the photo or the multimedia production and the videos are clear and well edited, showing of course also the photos talked about in the video.

Hear the fascination stories behind Danish photographer Marie Hald’s portrait of the prostitute Bonnie; how Arkasha Stevenson from the Los Angeles Times created her online short story about a 12-year-old transgendered child; or hear, of course, Paul Hansen tell how he came close to the mourning parents of two dead boys n killed in Gaza City.

E www.worldpressphoto.org/ videolibrary/2013-winners

SNDSMagazine 2013|2

n in

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SNDS Magazine 2013|2 the President

Failure is good for success SNDS President Anders Tapola anders.tapola@smp.se

What’s wrong with our industry?

That’s a question for SND Scandinavia’s next annual workshop in Copenhagen 10–11 October 2013.

And one answer is: Our industry went wrong because we tried to do everything right.

So take a walk on the wrong side this fall.

And you will meet several top speakers from all around the world who’ll tell you what they did wrong and – most important – how they after all managed to hit something right.

Sounds complicated?

Maybe so.

n

But maybe failure is good for success?

Thomas Edison, who was told by a teacher he was “too stupid to learn anything”, is said to have responded as follows when asked how he felt when he failed 1,000 assets in his attempts to invent the light bulb: “The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”

And indeed, it’s still a design that works. orville and Wilbur Wright were tired of selling bikes and tried to create flying machines instead. They failed infinite times. But finally they were able to create an aircraft hovering in the air.

And it’s still a design that works.

The young cartoonist Walt Disney faced many rejections from newspaper editors, who said he didn’t have neither talent nor imagination. Then he drew a cartoon with a small mouse at the request of a church. Mickey Mouse was born. it’s still design that works.

n

PHoto: LENa GuNNarSSoN

Henry Ford failed several times trying to start automobile companies. But one day he started Ford Motor Company and revolutionized the industrial production, not only in the United States, but in the world.

Still design (well almost) that works.

And how do you transfer this theme to our industry? i hope you will have some answers at the Wrong workshop in Copenhagen. We will offer a variety of exciting people who have taken the step to do something really right.

For the moment there is an ongoing development in this industry, which at first glance does not look so good. in the newspapers fewer designers are needed. One reason is the design hubs that spreads right now in Scandinavia. in Denmark, this development has already taken place. Now its time for Norway, Finland and Sweden.

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But we still need skilled news designers.

And we especially need news designers who can develop other media platforms. For example: websites, mobile apps, iPad magazines and platforms that we do not yet even know about yet. There is still much to do, in my opinion, in this still virgin soil.

That’s the challenge for the future. And then i also expect that it could go wrong before it becomes right.

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Welcome to Wrong in Copenhagen on October 10–11!

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