Lots of talk about the Los Angeles Times' latest redesign -- which comes, as redesigns so often do, at a time when the paper is preparing to gut the staff that actually puts the paper together. Of course, that's not the way the PR department sees it: this sorta-halfa-redesign demonstrates a "commitment to readership" and "signals expanded accessibility to Southern California's news, arts, style and culture."
Would that they had the same commitment to "writership," but c'est la yadda yadda.
Most of the discussion is about the new front page (skyboxes! color!), and a lot of people think it's junky and cheesy. I think it's actually quite a bit better than before. Compare:
Yeah, there's probably too many different fonts slugging it out for attention, but overall it's more appealing, and more likely to grab the eye of someone walking past the newsbox on his way into Denny's. And the skyboxes are actually semi-stylish instead of clunky and hyperliteral.
(I'd sooner gripe about the main headline, because I have no idea what "TRANSPLANT MONITOR LAX IN OVERSIGHT" could possibly mean. On first read, I thought "lax" meant "LAX" as in "airport," but I still don't know what a transplant monitor could be, and I shouldn't have to keep reading to find out.)
But the Times hasn't touched the bigger problem, which is the inside pages...the boxiest and ugliest inside pages of any major daily in the country. Behold page A3:
That's editorial on the left, completely dwarfed by boxy ads and fenced in with boxy rules of all sizes. What relation does that bear to the art-directed front page? It doesn't even look like the same newspaper.
And then there's this inside page, which is all edit and no ads, and somehow manages to be even worse:
Where would a reader even start on this page? Columns of unbroken type like tombstones; boxy-boxy pictures with boxy-boxy captions (and not even good boxy-boxy pictures); vague headline in ugly font -- this page has it all. Except readability. And interest. And style.
The Times can twiddle with the section fronts all it wants, but it's like putting a new façade on an old tract house and hoping it'll entice some buyers. It might...but once those readers get inside and see the ugly boxy bedrooms and the dated details, I doubt they'll put down an offer.
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