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Printer-Friendly ModeEditor's note
October 22, 2007 —
Good design in print media does at least two things: it gives readers what they want, and it looks good while doing it.
Designers often fret over what "good" is, and editors always want to know what readers want. Believe me, there is no consensus, anywhere, among anyone. The world of print design is becoming increasingly lawless, as the medium loses traction to the Internet, iPods, and entertainment branded as information (for example, Fox News). Editors and publishers want to know how to retain their readership as circulation numbers round the drain, and often, massive redesigns are part of their strategies.
Recent overhauls you may have noticed include the stoic Wall Street Journal, which trimmed its width by an inch and a half. The New York Times also cut the fat on the Gray Lady by a little over an inch.
College papers are, in general, not party to a lot of the same concerns that professionals in the newspaper business lose sleep over. Most (ours included) receive some kind of funding from their respective universities in addition to advertising revenue, and that helps to stave off profit-margin insomnia.
But that doesn't let college papers off the hook.
The Vanguard's ongoing redesign (which I hope you may have noticed by now) aims to simplify and focus the paper. Never again will we ask you to read a front page with 10,000 words on it. Pullout sections will give you color photos of stuff you never had the chance to see in color before, especially sports shots that have long been relegated to the inside pages. The new Courtyard section has all the campus news from the week in the same spot - all your profiles, event coverage and short features will be in the same place, every week. No more flipping between 4 pages to get your campus news.
We'll debut a state/national/international section before long to lend perspective to the goings-on on and around SVSU. And we're still working on your favorite - the opinion pages will be cleaner, simpler, and more focused in a few weeks' time.
So I hope I've filled you all in as to what we are trying to accomplish at the paper. Just because we're a college rag doesn't mean we don't have to keep up. We want to compete for your attention just as much as Bill O'Reilly.
Well, maybe not that much. He's all yours.