blog_Clémence Villaines_Newspaper design : Between efficiency and uniqueness

I read this week an article in Eye Magazine, which tries to understand the graphic and technical choices made by newspapers. The design of newspapers faces two contrasting forces : time and uniqueness. Production must be fast, to satisfy the demand. But at the same time, each title must be different to stand out and be innovative. All newspapers struggle with these two issues and try to deal with them.

The first force is time pressures. Daily or even weekly newspapers have to produce at a frantic pace. The development of new technologies had considerably improved the rapidity and technical facility of newspapers production. Particularly in the last 25 years, technology has made it possible to revise upwards what can or cannot be done, because conception time is much faster.

The other force is singularity. Newspapers have to stand out from their opponents, who are probably communicating the same information on the front page as they are. Each newspaper had to define its own identity, to be recognized among the others and to express its personality.

It is important to remember that newspapers are initially functional objects. At the beginning of the press development, the most important thing was to communicate as much information as possible, in a format as short as possible. The text was composed in very narrow columns, the information came in an uncertain order and there was initially no iconography. The place of the information and therefore of the text was primordial. Today, more complex design considerations exist. Newspapers must satisfy an audience to compete, and design helps to deal with this issue. The choice of typeface, a color, a layout, or other factors define the appearance of a newspaper and subtly alter its readability. Often, newspapers are afraid to change what makes their identity, to avoid upsetting their readers who will only accept a new formula if the previous one is not efficient.

The newspapers have to decide on how to deliver the news, which are different every day, while keeping their graphic vocabulary that ensures their identity. The newspapers choose, according to the type of information that they relay, what will be their look and their identity, to answer a need of efficiency and singularity.