Newsdesigner.com | GETTING IT ALL STRAIT*

GETTING IT ALL STRAIT*

3:42 AM, October 21, 2004

The Straits Times in Singapore has redesigned. And they've written a rather self-congratulatory story about it:

Businesswoman Chiau Yee Ching, 36, was pleasantly surprised when she picked up her paper at her regular news-stand near the Ang Mo Kio MRT station: 'I thought it was a foreign paper at first.'

News vendors like Mr Muthu Kumaran, 32, also saw some initially-puzzled customers: 'Readers are used to coming in and taking a copy from the same shelf without looking.

'But some hesitated and asked where The Straits Times was,' said Mr Muthu, who sells at least 80 copies a day from his stand in Bedok South.

A quick flip through their copy and a look of familiarity registered on their faces, he said with a smile.

Ms Elizabeth Tanjung, 34, a housewife who picked up her papers from a news-stand along Orchard Road yesterday, said that the redesign was a big change 'but a welcome one'.

'Each story really catches my eye now.'

Many readers interviewed were all for the new content, the bigger photographs and the in-depth articles that came with the makeover of the 159-year-old paper.

They've dumped the DaniloBlack design and the Jim Parkinson nameplate in favor of all caps Trajan, apparently. In a post after the redesign was previewed in September, the commenters at Snog Blog, a Singaporean typography weblog, were not kind. Typographer Hrant H. Papazian says:

"What a goddam disaster of a joke of a masthead. Even American newspapers have the sense not to use Trajan like that. It looks like a Daniel Steele novel or a Brad Pitt movie. And watduhel is that �RA� supposed to be? A symbol for the gap between Singapore and Sumatra? The friggin� least they could have done is tame the tail (or lower it), or make a tasteful ligature. The heading font looks decent. But I�m almost afraid to see what they did with the body font, since that�s by far the hardest and most important ingredient."

Perhaps the powers that be listened to the wise Hrant, because the RA spacing has been adjusted since the prototype page was produced (prototype nameplate is on top):

*Update: Don't miss the comments to this post, where Karen Huang of Snog Blog identifies some more of the ST's new typography.

>ST makeover proves a hit with readers [The Straits Times]
>STrajan? [Snog Blog]

Comments

Heads up: After you hit "post" things may be slow and you may get an error. Most likely, your comment did post. Apologies. I'm looking for a fix.

Yup, the first thing that I noticed was that they closed up the gap, but I still can't look at it without Star Wars music playing in my head.

Although I quite like the body text font that they have used, I haven't identified it.

I also spotted Rotis Sans, which they used for the standfirsts and then for random headers. It's officially our national font now. It certainly was not designed for newsprint. Almost unrecognisable.

Also spotted were Font Bureau's Gizmo for the Digital Life supplement that came with the papers on Oct 19 (launch date of the redesign).

Also spotted was TheSans, which was used for headlines in the supplement.

Also spotted is another sans serif, an Arial/Helvetica-ish looking face, which they used with all-caps Rotis headers.

And Life! is now life! (but only on the first page of the second section), it is still Life! on the rest of the pages. It spots an e with an angled horizontal bar. This section masthead is accompanied by some Futura.

Pardon the mistakes, if any, I'm not the best at identifying fonts and they have used soooo many.

Coming from an organisation who reported over half a billion in profit, this is an example of bourgeoisie design at it's finest, I think.

Or is it nouveau riche?

Posted by: Karen Huang at October 21, 2004 7:30 AM

Yeesh, that's a whole basket o' fonts! Thanks, Karen!

Posted by: newsdesigner at October 21, 2004 12:26 PM

To add to the basket, a kind reader has identified the bodytext as Rotation, headlines as Utopia, and there's apparently some Lucinda somewhere in the mix as well....

Geeez!

Posted by: Karen Huang at October 21, 2004 7:23 PM

Hey, cool - at least they fixed the "RA". But Trajan is still a most unfortunate choice for a newspaper masthead. Unless it's in Hollywood.

Rotation is an interesting choice - if only because it's somewhat obscure. BTW, what was the body face before?

Utopia is great: well-crafted and very newsy (in fact I would have just used it for the body too). But that bestiary of fonts Karen has tagged is jaw-dropping. What would these people rather spend their money on, gold-plated yaghts? It costs so little to simply make good decisions - it's disheartening. But I guess realizing you need to pay attention to the foundations of design and give the job to somebody qualified is too much on the brain and ego...

Bourgeois? Yes, but even just the first days of it, before the more advanced general bourgeoisie has ridiculed it. :-/ A prediction: they'll reduce the number of tertiary fonts over time, but will be stuck with the overall gaudy feel for a while.

hhp

Posted by: Hrant at October 22, 2004 10:35 AM

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