What do yesterday’s news, dirty fingers, and an awkward size describe? For me, it’s a newspaper. I’m not a newspaper person. I seldom read a newspaper. I do look at the NYT online a lot, but I’ve never subscribed to a newspaper in my life. In the past I preferred news magazines, tv, or the radio to newspapers. And now you can add the internet as the main source of news for me. It seems that the internet is really punishing newspapers now.
Maybe there’s hope for the papers though. I saw the winner of the world’s best-designed newspaper competition and I think I’d read this newspaper. Unfortunately for me it’s from Portugal and is in Portuguese. The name of the newspaper is “i.” You can check it out here.
“i” has a lot going for it. It’s less than 10 by 14 inches and lightly stitched along the fold so it can be read like a magazine and is also easy to navigate. The graphics and photos are in color, drawing you in and focusing your attention. It’s claimed that the copy is fresh and engaging too, I’ll have to take the judges’ word on that.
Maybe other papers should borrow some of the design elements from “i” to recapture readers. I’d read more papers if they were like “i.” I don’t know what took the newspaper industry so long to get it so right. I guess they had a captive audience and no reason to innovate. I hope it’s not too late for papers. Lots of happy trees out there, I’ll bet.