Newspaper Design

I'm a print geek deep down. Very deep down, in my geekiness terms print is lower than poetry. In my print geekiness, I have a very soft spot for newspapers. Newspapers, have an early history in China with private news sheets used to keep government officials up-to-speed. Nowadays, news dissemination occurs via phones, tablets, and computers.

Newspapers have four major distinguishable qualities:

1. publicity, content accessible to public
2. periodicity, publication in regular intervals
3. currency, information is up to date
4. universality, covers a range of topics (as opposed to magazines, which are mostly centered on a few topics)

These same four qualities appear in digital renditions of newspapers. However, I'm more interested in newspaper design and printing. Newspaper designs are a dying brand of print product history. Most times, the original print design of a newspaper is lost in the digital shuffle. Social applications like paper.li make a huge effort to incorporate print design into the content. While on the other hand, places like Storify, take the familiar 'social media' graphic approach.

Newspaper design is just fascinating. There is practically no space to fit extraordinary typography, no budget for color designs, and no time to magically design everything in. I found this Google resource with newspapers from all over the place and it's fun to see the type in older ad designs.

Announcement from L'Abeille - Dec 3, 1827

Other than the type choice, not a lot changed in 80 years of the type design. But, maybe just the perspective of readers. In this digital age, black and white type have lost to the gradients and colors of our sRGB screens.

Ad from Yukon World - Aug 27, 1904.

Appreciation for sleek stark text and undisturbed white background is hard to find and that makes my career as a designer a challenge. But, also rewarding when I get to design heavy text black and white projects.