Tag: TODAY

The reality of The Straits Times

ST3d

Straits Times put on trial its latest “feature” today — seeing the world through tinted lenses (aka 3D glasses).

The paper says this is one way it is trying to improve itself, by allowing its readers to get the news from a different perspective. So I decided to do a simple quantitative analysis to find out if it was so. It turned out that only 10 out of the 65 news photo and graphics (excluding small profile pictures) could be seen in 3D perspective. On the other hand, some 20 advertisements were 3D ready. Plus, that pair of 3D spectacles was “Brought to You by Samsung”. And, if you didn’t know, TODAY newspaper was actually the first to bring 3D to newspapers. They worked with Panasonic Singapore and were upfront about it.

Most importantly, they kept it out of editorial content.

This aggressive campaign by Samsung and Panasonic to reinvent advertising on our local newspapers to push the 3D agenda is one thing. But, 3D editorial content? I’m not sure if it works, at all.

Besides the fact that it takes 1.5 hours for the photo desk to process a 3D photo, and photographers having to shoot such that it is suitable for 3D, the effect is simply not very nice at all. Through those glasses, the photos lose their colour. Without them, the photo looks blur. Moreover, none of the photos I saw today convinced me that seeing something pop out was nothing more than gimmicky. And, let’s not even start on how those spectacles hinders the reading experience!

If ST is really keen on improving their readers’ needs for images in the newspaper, then put it in multimedia journalism like this, and give more space to infographics and photojournalism in the newspaper and online. No need for anything fanciful, just let the talented photographers and artists do good old visual storytelling.

The only reason why I think ST hopped on to 3D was because it is ‘cool’ now to have it, and I won’t be surprised if it was heavily subsidised by the advertisers in some way or another.

A Design of Its Time — 2000s

Keeping up with the times – the changing look of Singapore’s longest surviving English newspaper The Straits Times.

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Introduction } 1960s } 1970s } 1980s } 1989 } 1998 } 2000s
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ST2004coverLooking like the competition

In November 2000, Singapore’s broadcasting company Mediacorp launched its free daily Today, while SPH countered with Streats in addition to setting up two television channels. However four years after, battered by competition and an economic recession, a ceasefire was called. The only survivor was Today, which continues as Mediacorp’s alternative paper to ST.

A month after the announcement, ST unveiled a redesign done entirely by in-house designers. For the first time, news on Asia came ahead of world news with the ASIA section following after the day’s prime news. This was “to reflect the growing importance of the region”[i] to ST’s readers.

More importantly, the paper went “big on lifestyle” as it claimed that readers wanted this more than the news.[ii] Its thirty-one year old nameplate was replaced and typeset in Trajan – a typeface choice for popular Hollywood movies. A feature story section, Upfront, started on the cover and three new weekly lifestyle magazines, Digital Life, Mind Your Body and Urban were also introduced for a more affluent society hungry for information on how to live in a First-World country.

In line with ST’s philosophy for the paper to appeal to the masses, news reports were extracted into full-blown magazines. A format that helped readers quickly get what they wanted and offering the many advertisers from the computer, health and fashion industry a more targeted approach to reach out to its readers.

The fight for the advertising dollar was more competitive now with the extremely advertiser-friendly Today. As the free paper depended entirely on advertisers for revenue, Today had no qualms about having its cover wrapped up in advertisements, and ST soon followed suit. By 2006, the over 100-page paper came in multiple parts each fronted by a section cover. Advertisers were offered to command the cover on any of these sections, except the main section, leaving just a corner flap to indicate that there was still news inside.

A Digital Look

The rise of new media and the Internet led the paper to redesign once more in 2008, the third within a decade. “The pressure newspapers face to remain relevant and attractive to readers has intensified over the last ten years. We can no longer take our readers for granted because there are so many other alternatives available today, especially on the Internet,” said editor Han.[iii]

The redesigned paper would mimic its competition online. The cover was packed with promos of inside stories that resembled links on the front page of a website with broken-up news stories on the cover and jump pages becoming a norm. Mirroring the popularity of online blogs, ST replaced Upfront with a daily commentary column on page two.

Launched together with its latest Internet offerings, the paper created space for the new online ‘section’, Every section cover advertised the most commented and read story from its online website.

By now, Singapore was also gearing up for a greying population. To better serve this audience that probably read the printed ST more than youths, it became elderly-friendly. To aid reading, the paper switched to a five-column grid that meant wider columns. The body text size of its new typefaces was also increased. ST even changed its nameplate, claiming to have been inspired by what it looked like when it first began.[iv]

Like Singapore, today’s ST looks nothing like it did 50 years ago. After all, the newspaper is a cultural product specific to its time of production. “What is significant is not the particulars of the dress but the overall pattern, which reveals our assumptions about the role of the newspaper in culture and its use by common people,” wrote Barnhurst.[v]

To survive in Singapore, ST has increasingly adapted itself along commercial interests, redesigning over the past decade to stay relevant to its readers and advertisers. As a modern business organisation, it now operates on the values of production efficiency, with design and layout increasingly becoming automated and computerised. The daily pages come to designers already laid out with standard-sized advertisements. However, the ubiquity of advertisements limits the variety of overall design and it is arguable that this is why ST has rarely won design accolades given by aesthetically driven organisations like the Society of News Design.

That said, ST’s design works here. In a country, where design is seen a function of aesthetics instead of a functional aesthetic, where design is rooted in trends and driven by commercial imperatives, what we find designed into the pages of the ST is finally but a reflection of the values of the community it serves.

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  • [i] Fook Kwang Han, “Why We’re Having a New Look,” The Straits Times, October 19 2004.
  • [ii] Ibid.
  • [iii] Fook Kwang Han, The Straits Times, October 19 2004.
  • [iv] Ibid.
  • [v] Barnhurst, 11.

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First published in The Design Society Journal.
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It’s always grey in TODAY

Halfway into the interview, Design Editor Edric Sng suddenly asks (one of many times) for my thoughts  on TODAY’s newspaper design and that is when I fumble. It took me a while, but I remembered another blog’s gripe about how “texty” TODAY looks.

It turns out that the paper is intentionally text-driven, or “grey” for a reason — advertisements. Two-thirds of the newspaper is made up of ads, so rather than compete with ads with colourful visuals that would cut text, Sng says, “It just comes down to the lesser of two evils.” Thus, being grey helps the news to stand out.

Ads play such a big role in this free newspaper’s design because that is its only source of revenue. This is why Sng laughs when he talks about ST’s news design constraints, “You think they have it hard? Nonsense!” he says. Moreover, the paper’s space constraints are further limited by its  tabloid-size, but Sng is clear that ads are why he gets paid.

Why TODAY is still in Times New Roman
When Sng led the three month long redesign of TODAY (he takes another swipe at ST for doing theirs in six) the one thing he was not allowed to change was the nameplate. As a fledgling newspaper, it could not afford to undo the branding work for a paper still trying to establish itself. That aside, everything went out of the door as Sng streamlined a paper too thin for too many different styles. He used just three colours of red, black and grey (business section was blue for marketing reasons) and two styles, one for daily and another for the weekend edition.

The redesign’s three guiding concerns were as follows: space constraints, making day-to-day design “idiot proof” and costs. Only two people led the redesign, Sng and his managing editor, and this he says led to a more coherent redesign than ST’s, which even had its nameplate’s typeface changed a day before launch. “We don’t believe in redesign by committee (like ST)… the problem is a lot of people don’t know what they are saying.” he says.

This lack of visual journalism knowledge here is one reason why Sng is considering lecturing when the opportunity arises. Education is how to improve newspaper design here, he says, especially since Singapore newspaper’s editors are mostly “dinosaurs” who only see journalism as text. Sng thinks at least 30 per cent of stories in today’s papers can be in alternative story formats like infographics, though it is the “hardest damm thing” to do too.

Another reason for the lack of innovation in newspaper design here is the lack of impetus with just two media companies. But though the odds seem stacked against improving things here, Sng has, and maybe, embodies the solution. After listening to my gripe about the situation, he says, “What’s the solution? Passion.”

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This concludes the two-part interview that  The Paginator had with Edric. Read his thoughts on the importance of text to the good design of a newspaper here.