The Society of Publication Designers recently did a feature on the art direction for the Riverfront Times, an alternative weekly available in the St. Louis area. In this piece they celebrate the work of senior art director, Tom Carlson.
In short, they say, "He does a lot of smart, cool work."
See for yourself and I think you'll agree, Tom does a lot of smart, cool work.
The article continues to offer a reason as to why Tom is able to be so crafty with his art and design.
Wow, if that's the case then the Riverfront Times must love the web. I mean, if they can produce work of that caliber because they are free from the restrictions of sales and subscriptions, imagine what they can do without the shackles of printing and distribution. At a place that obviously celebrates really great design their website must glow like a thousand angels! And with Tom at the helm maybe a newspaper has finally awoken from their Adobe GoLive '99 slumber.
Oh look, as it turns out the Riverfront Times is just another newspaper that is living in the past and waiting for that Internet thing to go away and to stop bothering them. Pity.
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
One of the big things newspaper websites get wrong is how they integrate advertising. It's as if they've all plugged into the same banner system (which probably isn't far from the truth). The placement of web ads is all wrong, and it restricts design possibilities, which is a big reason newspaper websites tend to suck. There's a few that don't suck completely, but I have yet to see advertising in a newspaper website done well. Perhaps I haven't looked hard enough.
Amen, man. I wonder why we don't see the opposite of this dynamic — a great, bold website that's well art directed and design, with a supplementary print piece that's less frequent.
Seems that publishing model might succeed right now; a great site you visit daily and a quarterly print piece that summaries the best work.
Essentially what Monocle tried to do, but flipping the focus on the medium, from print to web. (Monocle's website is great, but doesn't seem to be a the focus of the publication).
don't you mean "glow like a thousand angels"?
One of my favorite web magazines was the old cbcr3.com. Full screen photos, nice type, nice page-turn animation, and an embedded audio player that played whatever the top songs on the radio that week were.
Why isn't anyone doing anything close to that now, except for Jason Santa Maria on his own awesome site? Content management behind theme-smashing layout?
Greg,
Is your criticism of the art director who isn't embracing the Web, the Riverfront Times who isn't innovating, Village Voice Media's corporate strategy or the whole lot? Because they are all very different problems and none of them easily solved.
Sure, call the site craptastic, but it is no more so than the LAWeekly, Seattle Weekly, Phoenix New Times or anything else under the Village Voice banner. Nor is it demonstrably worse than a hundred other publications that thrived in one medium and are now completely adrift.
Regardless, I doubt anyone is "waiting for that Internet thing to go away."
Last year, with the Society for News Design, I helped teach dozens of print designers Web basics. I've seen how eager they are to translate their finely honed skills. None were naive, but traversing design's analog/digital gulf is a daunting task. It's not particularly easy to embrace CSS validation and DOM traversal while their colleagues are being laid off, their salaries reduced and they are facing a folder full of InDesign files to produce.
Anyway. Yes. It's a pity these sites aren't better and yes, the Web needs more genius art direction. SND is always looking for volunteers, speakers and teachers if you want to help us out.
So true and so sad - Applies to a lot of business sites too. - The same grid, the same type, the same, same - Boring
This is exactly why, as a print designer, I get worked up when I see job postings for a print or graphic designer that sneak in "Flash and HTML skills a plus!"
"Looking for a plumber with master plumber designation, must have 15 years of experience with large job. Electrical skills a plus!"
The web has matured both culturally, visually, and in terms of technology and standards. Web design/development is not "a kind of graphic design", if it ever was. Plus, some clients are still grappling with the web. There are still a lot of highly placed individuals in client organizations who "don't do the web" or "don't get that tech stuff", and therefore don't/can't engage in the web as a medium for critique and understanding. Any project with that problem will suffer.
My local Heartland Publications papers are horrific in design, two weeks late with news, and rife with errors. Just YESTERDAY they advertised that a comedian was coming to a local playhouse IN NOVEMBER - turns out it was a typo - but still. Our situation was so bad, I started up my own local news organization to compete. www.atlibertytosay.com - I'm not saying it's the best design - but it's light years beyond our local papers.
"© 2010 Village Voice Media All rights reserved." says it all.
All the VVM papers look alike and VVM is the largest alt-weekly publisher in the country. So, in that regard, they are very similar to the main-stream press.
Typically, the print organizations are fairly autonomous, but the electronic systems are more tightly controlled by corporate. So, in essence, a great deal of the blame lies at the feet of the IT department.
I live in STL right now and I've been informed through back-channels that better days are a-comin' for the RFT's site.
I did an analysis of newspaper websites last month and it is quite depressing the state that they are in. The sad thing is, it doesn't seem as though they are even attempting to improve. Maybe it is the larger companies that run them being happy with a slow death or the managers running them are scared to risk their jobs on something new, but this won't last much longer for them.
We have two large papers in Tampa and they are the exact same in format with horrible websites. If one of them made some changes and pushed their designs a bit I guarantee it would lead to there being only one major paper here.
The bigger question, hinted at by some of the comments, is - is anyone willing to pay for better design - and from a business point of view, that translates to 'will better design raise more revenue than it costs'.
(and to be fair, as my main means of reading my daily paper is Net News Wire/Google News, that's a good question)
The http://guardian.co.uk is probably my favourite news website design.
I might argue that print design and web design are actually two very different things, and that excellence and attention to detail in one does not necessarily translate to the other, any more than an architect who has a lot of experience with and is a genius at shopping mall design and retail layout could be expected to design an amazing 3 bedroom ranch house.
This also begs the question: is there any newspaper website that has a great webpage? I can't think of any, myself.
Nearly three years ago Information Architects had a wonderful vision for what the washington post could be online.
And at three years old that design is //still// better.
http://informationarchitects.jp/washington-post-redesign-as-a-wiki/
I wonder what these newspapers are using for content management. Our local paper (pressdemo.com) is nearly identical, and I've noticed this same layout/style across a variety of news sites.
Are they all just using the same CMS and putting no thought into the layout, or are they all just executed equally badly?
And if you think these are bad, just look at any local TV station website. Yeesh!
Newspaper companies will NEVER solve this problem until print editions are scaled back to once a week or dropped entirely so that people resources can be refocused to the Web.
For the most part, these publishers and executive editors are very unimaginitive morons when it comes to design and at best, only are capable of copying what they are told to try at the latest publishing conferences. Worse -- they all are cheap bastards. So, the entire industry will ride their cash cows into the ground until a few of the largest metro dailies figure out a new, Web-based business model. Sadly, journalism is a dead end profession and it is print newspapers that are killing it. This comes from someone who worked in the industry for 20 years, but abandoned it after I saw this coming. Best decision I ever made.
Hi Greg,
Thanks for this article.
I wrote and posted a response on my website.
>> Newspaper companies will NEVER solve this problem until print editions are scaled back to once a week or dropped entirely so that people resources can be refocused to the Web.
This nails it. I don't read newspapers or magazines anymore (not for years), everything I want to read is on the web. And my kids certainly don't care about printed publications. I've been getting calls from newspapers/magazines lately trying to sell me subscriptions at rates that are essentially giving away their product. What does it say about an industry when you offer to give away your product and people still don't want it? And why exactly would I want to read yesterday's news?
I can maybe provide some additional info here...
Background: Me and my small company are currently trying to break into this space (web-publishing for alt-weeklies) with a new piece of software we've developed (all of which will remain unnamed because or ethical reasons or because I'm a pussy).
During this time I've discovered a lot about how alt-weeklies work. One of the main trends is that while you may think they are independent and progressive minded, when it comes to practice, what one does, they all do. This is especially evident on the web. They all just chase what one or another does, partly because they don't understand the medium itself, but the result of this is that all their sites end up looking the same.
They all fall into the same banner ad patterns, they all gravitate to the same set of features, they all end up with basically the same design. There really is no vision, and certainly no high-level strategic thought going into their websites.
This also leads to another fact in the space. Most of their sites end up running on the same content management system called Gyrobase, buy a company in Arizona called DesertNet. Regarding this software, I'll just put it plainly, its a piece of shit. But like I said, these papers don't know any better. And once a few papers started using it, they all jumped on board. The company is also tightly ingrained with the parent organization (AAN). I find that a little odd on the part of the AAN.
Now to step back a bit, to DesertNet's credit, they did just release an update to the software called Foundation. It is an improvement, but more so in the list of features than the actual approach and philosophy of the software.
And I'll also say that, of course, not all papers are bad. Some actually have their own vision, and try to be unique, but in general it's not the case. They really just don't get the web. Plain and simple. I've spent many hours explaining the merits of our software, and it always is analogous to me explaining the difference between the 4-cylinder and the 6-cylinder model and them still asking whether they can keep the wheels from their horse and buggy. Until the management and staff is filled with more capable web people, these papers will be followers and not leaders.
Anyway, I could go on all day, but I'll stop my rant here.
Tyson writes: Is your criticism of the art director who isn't embracing the Web, the Riverfront Times who isn't innovating, Village Voice Media's corporate strategy or the whole lot? Because they are all very different problems and none of them easily solved.
My criticism is towards newspapers in general that spend a lot of time, resources, and money to get the print edition to look fantastic and then do nothing to translate that experience online the Riverfront Times is just a great example. In this example you have an art director who does brilliant work and it's hidden on the site whereas it should be the masthead each and every week. There's no reason why this can't be done and it would go a long way in tying the two publications together AND help give that horrible design a some much needed lift.
Scrivs writes: I did an analysis of newspaper websites last month and it is quite depressing the state that they are in. The sad thing is, it doesn't seem as though they are even attempting to improve. Maybe it is the larger companies that run them being happy with a slow death or the managers running them are scared to risk their jobs on something new, but this won't last much longer for them.
Which is why I have a hard time feeling sorry for the newspaper industry. You have to innovate in every way possible, there is no other way to survive.
Wilbur writes: Is there any newspaper website that has a great webpage? I can't think of any, myself.
I think we're about to see some really cool web based news design via Apple's upcoming product. The question is, are newspapers going to do anything to bring that new look and feel to their own publications or continue looking like a really bad Pennysaver?
The sarcasm is unbelievably thick. I love it. I'm not even sure why I'm here, but hey.
The problem as I see it is focus. You have sales people who don't know how to sell advertising to the web, editors who don't know how to edit for the web, designers who don't know how to design for the web and an industry in crisis and expect them to make something work on the web. It's not going to happen.
The problem is also cyclical. Say you hire a salesperson who can finally sell ads for the website. How is s/he going to sell ads when the website does not work? Say you want to hire a smart design firm like Happy Cog to redesign/redevelop your website, you can't because they can't afford it because there is no focus to make a smart ROI.
The real question is why aren't the web-based media companies doing this? Why isn't Slate, Salon, etc. kicking ass?
I would argue that these companies rely to heavily on content management systems over people. I'd love to work for an online media company with a team of designers that could layout stories every day. I did it at a newspaper for three years, why can't we do it online? We laid out a daily newspaper with an art director and 3 designers. Seems reasonable to me. Go look at a Slate or Salon. Who wants to look at that text monstrosity for longer than 5 minutes and good luck finding anything.