Document text
It looks different, all right, but it's the same Mail Tribune The print edition undergoes a cosmetic overhaul designed to make it easier to read By MARK DODGE MEDLIN The Mail Tribune has had a makeover. You've probably already noticed much of the new design - different type for headlines and photo captions, a new look for the front page. There's a lot more, but rest assured, the content of the newspaper hasn't changed. Almost all of the changes are cosmetic, designed to give the Mail Tribune a lighter look that's easier to read. A newsroom committee began crafting the redesign in March, but the new look has been in the works for a lot longer. Some of the impetus came a couple of years ago, when a design guru from Portland stood up in front of the entire news staff and called the Mail Tribune "a great-looking paper - for 1987." Ouch. He was right, but he wasn't telling us anything we didn't already know. The paper looked old. The biggest problem was our headline type. We used a typeface called Helvetica. It was clunky, and it was boring, and it had to go. So it went. Most of our headlines now are in a font called Berkeley. It has a modern flair, and it's versatile enough for hard news and features. It's � well, you can see how much better it looks. Several of the most obvious changes are on Page One. First, we took the sun out of the banner. The sun was a remnant of the days right after the Mail Tribune switched to morning publication and wanted to remind readers of the change. It's been several years, and we figure you've gotten the message by now. We've also reconfigured our teasers, leaving more room for news near the top of the page. The main reason teasers ran across the top of the page was to sell papers out of newspaper racks. But new studies told us that people who buy the paper out of the racks do so because of the news of the day, not because of the teasers. Still, readers - including members of a community panel that meets monthly with news staffers - say they use the teasers to guide them through the paper. So we kept them; we just redesigned them. About the only other change likely to grab your attention is the new logos for several familiar features. We're aiming for a more consistent design style than we've had in the past, and the new logos are part of that. All in all, our aim was to make the Mail Tribune easier on the eyes and easier to read - in a word, classier. Please let us know what you think. Copy editor Mark Dodge Medlin led the Mail Tribune's redesign committee. He can be reached at 776-4474 or [email protected] . Other committee members were newsroom staffers Steve Dieffenbacher, Rob Galvin, Gary Nelson and Julie Wurth, photo editor Bob Pennell and sports staffers Steve Bennett and Kris Henry. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.