While I don't agree with every facet of this redesign, I'll always respect a paper willing to go out on a limb and try something bold, just to see if it wiggles the readership needle. Good luck, Bakersfield, and kudos for your hard work.

(One nitpick, though: Does that column sig on the Local front strike anyone else as being huge? I feel like the entire day's news is being presided over by the Slightly Perturbed Head Of Bob Price.

Ditto that, made me think of the King Kong front page. That picture is too big, and the placement is menacing. But I'm liking the color treatments - the blocks of colors. Attractive and different. I'd be interested in seeing inside pages. Do they continue this look and this use of color? I hope the design is a package which continues throughout.

The best design is simple design. This is clearly neither.

newspaper design, innovation, just took a huge step backward ... with so much going on that you don't even notice how fast and far you're falling. ouch.

although i liked the original front page of the redesign.. i can't say the same for these, OR for today's A1.

They're trying a lot of different things, and it's very eye-catching, so I'll give them a lot of credit for that. But there are three or four colors of screens behind type on each page. I'm afraid they might have what an old boss of mine called Crayola meltdown - an overload of colors that puts readers off.

It's hard to know from looking at jpegs online, though. Most of the colors (aside from the mustard, which scares me a little) are muted enough that it might look OK in print.

"It is so dependent on what images are available that we can’t really plan what is going in what position ahead of time. We basically throw all of the elements on the page and start moving them around and scaling them up and down until we find the combination that works best."

You can't plan!?!?

Bakersfield's redesign looks refreshing. It's not original but i think people are bored with how newspapers traditionaly look. they dont mind, i guess, magazine influences creeping into their newspapers.

Has anyone seen the inside pages? Does the theme keep going?

Principal Logo SPORTS look busy, too many colors in one page. Local paper look better. Clear and easy to read, that's the point!.
JFD

Being from Bakersfield, and having worked at the Californian, I will just say this: Bakersfield is not a newspaper reading town. Their competition is not print - it is Fox News. Hence, this look. Don't know if it'll work, but I'll bet they felt like they had to try something like it...

It looks alot better in person. Since probably over 95% of you are in the newspaper profession. I can only assume from your responses that your views are narrow and anything that is not the norm scares you. Could it be that you're affraid of change? This change is to appeal to the people reading the newspaper not newspaper designers. So in reality your responses about how bad it looks is not constructive critizism, unless your telling them how to make it better. Since i'm sure your aware that newspapers accross the country are losing readers, does it make you wonder why. Maybe people are bored with it. Any change that catches peoples eyes and gets them to read events in the world that affect them is a change that should be welcomed. A newspaper designers opinion means nothing if the readers don't agree.