lovely work!

but, raise your hand if your if your done with that sans-serif font.

It works in limited situations and you have to be able to really harness its power to be effective....

I actually quite like that sans-serif, although I think it will get dated quickly. I'm a little sad that The Fort Myers News-Press has stopped using it since they added it in their redesign a couple of years ago. Sans-serifs have a tendency to look very boring or very "today," and it's hard to find one that will impress for years to come.

So what's the name of that typeface, anyway?

Heh, so much for knowing that typeface. From the blog:

"The central san-serif headline font is Guggenheim Condensed, created by Jonathan Hoefler for the Guggenheim museums, now seeing its first usage in newspapers with this redesign."

So what are we thinking of?

I believe you might be thinking of Griffith Gothic, a sans serif that was not widely used in newspapers until the 2000 redesign of the San Jose Mercury News. After which, ahem, it became more widely used.

(Griffith, incidentally, was a revival of C.H. Grffith's 1937 Mergenthaler original by none other than Tobias Frere-Jones, when he was still working at Font Bureau. First recent editorial use was in the magazine Fast Company.)

That said, I do see Nicole's point, namely that seeing the full possibility of a great sans takes some skill. But, my oh my, do I believe it can be worth the effort.

Turns out the typeface I was thinking of is Relay.

Ah, Relay. Of course.

I like Relay, but I like it as accent font. We debated it for a while in KC, but I think it looks a little informal at times. My first glance at this redesign is that it's sharp. The heads have more impact, the page has more organization, and the rail is a bit cleaner (thanks to the nice font change).

The new page has a much cleaner look. I like the short story at the bottom as well as losing the blue line at the top. Lose the rail. They constrain your design too much. Maybe add to the basement box. The Skybox is too heavy also. Lose the screen and cut the action out of the photo. That might give the top some more air.

The first newspaper to use Guggenheim was La Presse, in Montreal, designed by Lucie Lacava in 2003.

The new nameplate is nice: the kerning looks better and it doesn't appear to have such an over-printed amount of black.

Interesting in looking at prototypes like this. The main photo was cropped to make it bigger and what was a nice secondary shot is gone.

I'm sure the crew there will do nice work with this.

Are we sure that La Presse used Guggenheim Condensed? To my knowledge, the face was not the condensed version. I'll message Lucie to find out.

Of course the redesign looks better. There are three story starts as opposed to five. Put the same number of starts on the page as your "before" example, then we'll talk.

Don't we always say that a redesign is more than a facelift, it's an in-depth look at how the paper is produced. Rules are changed; culture is examined. Does this not point to evaluating how a paper chooses which and how many stories run on a front? And who's to say what a story is anyway? Many people see the refers and rail items we run as stories in themselves. I'd argue that even thought there's less traditional starts out here that the redesign packs in more information while also showiing what better editing can produce.

Better editing is achieved through redesign consultants cobbling together a few prototypes? Wow, newspapering is easier than I thought.

Oooh! do we have a new Wordhawk? I keed, I keed.

I'm not talking about editing editing. You know, commas and dangling participles and such. I'm talkng about the broader definition. And really all I'm suggesting is that mandated story counts be done away with. I've seen many an undeserving story make it onto 1A because we HAD to have five stories. I think you have to earn it, and if three stories earn it then so be it. I also think a redesign can be a time to rethink your standards for the front page. I'm suggesting that's what was done here. Raising the standards...

additionally, it's a PROTOTYPE, and newspapers are flexible. I'm often asked at predesign meetings, "what if there's news?" Well, we'll adapt, like we always do. Same principle here.

Comparing me to Wordhawk? Are you trying to stifle dissent, Nicole? Upset that I'm rocking the feelgood design boat, which, after looking at this week's circ figures from Orlando and San Jose, should be christened the Titanic? Look, study the "before" and "after" pages a bit longer. You don't need a gaggle of consultants to tell you that fewer starts will result in a cleaner look. These frauds don't show us what a five-start front would look like, because if they did, it would be astonishingly similar to the "before" example shown here.

Gang,

It's one example. There are many. If you read the actual post we did on this, you would see that we say that.

You would also see that our original post is meant as a mechanism to tell people what's happening as a glimpse of things to come in Spokane, no where near meant to represent the totality of the redesign.

So I stress that it's a mistake to review the new design before you see more. But, of course, I cannot stop you from extrapolating wildly. I realize how fun that can be.

Let me just say ...

Some front pages have five traditional starts. Some have four. Some have three. One has one. One has six and no promos.

Some have rails on the left. Some have index pieces horizontally below.

One even has an all-refer cover, no traditional starts at all.

Readers in focus groups next week will get a chance to see them all. You won't.

You won't because the fine editors in Spokane have not yet made up their minds about what they would like to do. That's their call, after hearing from their readers.

The thing about design, really, is the possibilities it opens up. And that's no fraud.

-matt

La Presse was the first (and so far only) newspaper to use "Guggenheim Extra Light," a special version of the font commissioned by Lucie Lacava for the redesign. The Spokesman-Review uses a new batch of Guggenheims, namely the Condensed Bold weight that Matt mentioned above. There are a range of other weights in the works, which eagle-eyed readers might spot in People Magazine (Guggenheim Compressed Bold), among other places.