Two more of those traditional broadsheet newspapers are going tabloid – or, as the teams at Fairfax in Australia prefer to call it: compact (writes Mario Garcia).
Yes, as of March 4, 2013, Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald and The Age (Melbourne) appear in smaller packages, with new design touches and strategies. It is all part of a project that aims to make the newspapers more accessible to readers.
I am honoured to say that one day last fall I had a call from Matt Martel, the talented national presentation editor, inviting me to come to Sydney – that always stunning city – to take a look at the prototype he and his team had just completed and tested.
It didn’t take me too long to tell Matt that I would definitely accept his invitation. Who could say no? What, with Sydney among my top favourite five cities in the world, and already imagining those magic runs around the Sydney Opera House, right on that magnificent harbour!
A few weeks after this invitation I took to the air and the marathonic trip that a Florida to Sydney trek entails, and spent a week with Matt and his team conducting workshops and helping craft a new prototype which led to the newspapers readers get to see today.
What constitutes my project #658 had started.
First impressions of the in house prototype
I took a look at the prototype and liked a lot of what I saw, but suggested some small changes here and there. Perhaps my strongest recommendation was for a front page that would be less text driven and more photo/navigation oriented – as in a Flipboard or carrousel style (thinking digital).
“Capitalise on the great real estate that is the front page of the newspaper,“ I told Matt and the team. They immediately jumped into action, creating some great prototypes that are shown here.
Together, we built a variety of front and inside pages with this visual theme in mind.
Some of those ideas are in the pages readers of the SMH and The Age will see starting today. Some of those ideas did not make it beyond internal discussions, however.
“But, what will those loyal readers say?“
As happens often in these conversions, top management fears to alienate ‘loyal’ readers who may not like too radical a change. Have you heard that before? I have, hundreds of times.
With all my respect, and aware of what the focus groups have said (here in Australia and elsewhere), I do believe that readers of all ages are always more prepared for effective change that editors give them credit for. And, indeed, if focus groups reveal differently sometimes, it is because, we all form opinions based on the familiar, on what we know, and it takes time to get used to new things.
So, as the management team followed focus groups here to a T, there is much more text on the front page that I would like, but the overall new compact front page is energetic, vibrant and does lean towards Flipboard navigation, with the intrusion of some body text type that, I hope, will begin to get less as less as the new design evolves.
I am honoured to have been invited to participate in the change of the SMH and The Age, and I like a lot of what I see.
As we know, the first day and week of introducing a new look – especially a change of formats – is only the beginning. Evolution is the key.
I am hoping that some of those early prototypes we did will find their way as loyal readers offer their support. Let’s continue to monitor progress for these two well known Australian dailies.
Pictured: How The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald might have looked: models of the prototype created together by Garcia and the Fairfax team, with much less text on the front page
• From the Mario Blog with permission. Read the full Blog posting
More on the Fairfax redesign:
- Twenty questions about Fairfax Media’s mini metros (updated: Andrew Holden replies)