[print] You Can't Expect A Redesign Rollout Without a Memorable Glitch

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The rollout of the new re-re-redesigned The Oregonian was pointed out here two missives back. And it's not a bad thing.

But the redesigns of The O haven't been without their oopsies. Here's a highly amusing one. The fact that involves the comics page is sheerest coincidence.

Peep, if you will:

On the left, the section for Thursday, October 6th. On the right, Wednesday, October 5th. There is one difference: Thursday's section is headed Puzzles, whereas Wednesdays is headed Puzzles & Comics. 

But that's it. That's the only difference. Thursday's content is the exact same thing as Wednesdays.
Check the detail here. Wednesday's:

vice Thursday's:

The downside is, you've seen it all before; but that's the upside too, as you already know how to do the puzzles, you know how the comics turn out, and if your horoscope was splendid on Wednesday, well, Thursday's going to be just as good. 

And so that goes.

[print] The New New Oregonian Front Page, In The Flesh

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Saturday was our weekly sojourn to that bastion of a democratically informed public, the Mighty MultCoLib, and I finally got my chance to lay my meat-peepers on the real thing, and get an idea of how visually impressive, the new new The Oregonian design is.

Here, on the table in front of me, the paper:

A thing that was merely a protoype a few days ago is now a thing that's a thing. It's still a tabloid thing, though; one feature of the re-design is certainly not a return to broadsheet-ish.

The impression one gets is not so much that of a newspaper as some sort of hybrid between a newspaper and a magazine.

The modified blackletter O which serves as the "Oregonian Media Group"''s logo has the pride of place on the page, in the upper left-hand corner, where most of us really enter a page. That's smart; if you think of the page as a battlefield, that's where the invader (your reader) will make their landing. This also sets up a natural idea of grid, espeically the way they've sliced off the O on the right, giving a hard line with which to define a visual column and to draw the eye right down to where an important story could be. The bottom of the O extended left could also be a visual boundary, but somewhat of a weaker one.

The name of the publication, always a good thing to have, still plays but a supporting role in the layout.

Here, the O not only defines a natural visual progression from the top left down but the top left to the right across the top of the page, where a couple of notable interior news stories are called out.

The foliage photo in the middle of the page is allowed to break out of its bounds and overlap the big O, providing a bit of visual iconoclasm that has the result of drawing the eye into the one direction that the big O in the corner does not directly encourage. This space, already defined by the trend of the big graphic to pull the eye along the top and down the side, is ideal for a bit of color. In this case, a brief seasonal word about Portland's Hoyt Aboretum as a blandishment to visit, along with hours of operation and encouragement to visit online sources where more information can be found about the place, as well as online links to more images.

Where's the front-page index, you say? Right here, at the bottom, almost invisible.

The use of the fonts, Tiempos and Guardian Egyptian, are appropriate, but like the front-page index, the bylines and slug lines have also been rendered nearly invisible. I'd punch that up just a little. And I've noticed the type in the headline about the Arboretum, which is one I don't recognize and don't remember seeing it announced, is for subject headings in many of the stories. It scans well and has a genteel feel to it.

My verdict? Since The Oregonian has been going through it's changes the last few years, I've not been a fan. I don't get the idea of scaling the paper down to a tabloid size; thus robbed of the pleasure of not reading a broadsheet, the whole experience is a little less fun. I'm still making my peace with it. That is an ongoing project.

This redesign is, however, a solid idea. Reducing the O to a small box in the upper left was a change that was visually aggravating, and making the old masthead type even smaller broke my heart. A classic masthead like that is something you boast, not something you tuck away. So, even though the design fixation on the O is something that strikes me awkwardly, the way the design manifests it is an improvement, and the way it's put into service to catalyze the page layout here is sensible. It does bring a welcome sense of personality to the layout that the redesign lacked.

That was the message I read between the lines of the editor's blog post last week, and that's what's been accomplished. 

[print] Proofreading, Schmoofreading

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I know it might be in poor taste to poke fun at a prototype layout, but geez, Soylent News™, how hard can it be to recognize this one?

Calorado?

Next thing you know, this state will be called Idahoregon. 

Proofreading. It saves … well, something. 

[print] The Oregonian: Redesigning Again, For The First Time, Again

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So, I just peeped this on OLive:

Meet your new-new, New new new The Oregonian, Portland. Editor Mark Katches has some joss-stick and whalesong about it in his Editor's Notebook posting, including that it's starting today. From Tuesday, October 3rd, 2016, then, this will be the look of your morning paper, should you choose to look at it.

Featuring a new headline and body type, the most noticeable change is the releasing of the O from that tiny box they tried to imprison it in. The gothic blackletter wordmark The Oregonian also seems to have enlarged a bit. The technical aspect of the type, as related by Katches, is this:

Although the body type in the printed paper is the exact same size as the one readers are used to seeing (8.6 points), focus group participants overwhelmingly felt our new font and style was more readable. We've switched the body type from Guardian Egyptian to Tiempos Text – something that really only will matter to typography nerds. Bottom line: It is designed to read bigger.

We Portlanders read big. And, I am a typography nerd, so, for compariston, here's Guardian Egyptian:

Guardian Egyptian with drop caps. Source.

And here's Tiempos:

Tiempos Headline, with Text below. Source.

Also visible at the editor's blog post is a sample of what The Sunday Oregonian's going to be looking like. The 'nameplate' is going to be more the traditional style, across the top, a more old-fashioned newspaper approach. Of course, it's still all going to be tabloid, not broadsheet, but at least it won't look bad like it used to. If we're going to have to endure this Fun Size paper, at least it won't look awkward and uncomfortable.

The big O is going to have more fun on the front page, that's for certain. As Katches says:

Don't be surprised to see photographs and illustrations "interacting" with our Big O from time to time.

… which suggests to me that they're going to play similar graphic design games with the O as USAToday is playing with the big blue dot, which I actually like the sound of … I scoffed at the USAToday redesign when I first saw it, but the visual puns they play with that dot have actually been witty more often than not.

Also, the longtime Foodday section is simply going to be called Food from here on out. Whether or not the three ending letters were given buyouts or simply laid off is not known as of this writing.

I only have a virtual version of the paper to look at; as soon as I get a look at the newsprint-version, I'll add some more remarks and snarks.

[print] Soylent News™'s New Calendar Strikes Again …

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… but, on what day, it's kinda hard to tell. But then, isn't time an arbitrary thing, especially when NCA3 is doggedly, tirelessly, relentlessly redefining today's The Oregonian as a thing to be read?

We return to the scene of the crime, Library Day (accept no substitutes), and The Wife™, who is doing her usual weekly catch-up, and peeps it. Here's the wide-angle view:

So stipulated. And, now, the closeup.

Yep. As documented previously, there's been the Julian, the Gregorian, and now, the Oregonian Calendar. Didn't like the way Sunday, August 11th, 2014 worked out for you?

Don't worry, Soylent News™ is giving you a do-over on Monday, August 11th 2014.

But, as documented earlier, remember, it's always Tuesday at the new Fun-Size™Oregonian. 

And Tuesday is Soylent News™ day. 

[print] It's Always Tuesday In The New Fun Size™ Oregonian

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Changing calendars is nothing new, of course. The Julian calendar was upgraded to the Gregorian calendar, an in Ethiopia, they use a version of the calendar that includes leap days once every four years regardless (instead of omitting it in years evenly divisible by 400, as we do), resulting in the oddity (to us, anyway), that New Years Day, 2000, didn't happen for residents of Addis Abebe until September 11th, 2007. It is currently 2007 by the Ge'ez calendar.

However, in the West, we still keep to the Gregorian calendar, but here in the Beaver State, we've upgraded again … to The Oregonian Calendar.

It was revealed to us during our usual visit to the library. The Wife™goes through the week's Fun Size™ Oregonians which, as I've mentioned before, we never seem to have trouble getting, and she's frustrated, wondering where last Wednesday's paper was.

At last she lays it out day-by-day.

Oh, wait, what's this then?

Now, on my calendar, things don't run that way.

As our friend, the vintage Casio PV-S400 Pocket Viewer PDA will tell you, Monday the 21s is followed by Tuesday … the 22nd. The 23rd isn't supposed to come until Wendesday. 

Unless …

They've decided to upgrade our very calendar? Could that be? I mean, the modern The Oregonian is working hard to redefine our very idea of a newspaper as something to be read. Why not? But this isn't a calendar upgrade so much as a modern calendar levelling up, introducing new days in new sequences, without warning to the general population.

Kind of like reality until you find a Konami cheat for it.

But more research is called for. Stabilizing the test subject on the examining table, the patient is opened to examine the interior makeup … and IT'S STILL TUESDAY …

No need to panic. It was Tuesday, the 22nd, all along … they just hid it inside.

Of course, now Tuesday the 23rd follows Tuesday the 22nd. Mayhap Tuesday the 24th, after that, Tuesday the 25th, ad nauseam …  it's always Tuesday in Portland now. 

And it just stands to reason.

Tuesday is, after all, Soylent News™ day. 

[pdx] When Soylent News™ Stops Consuming People, It Will Eat Itself

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This just in, via Randy Stapilus, blogmaster at the Ridenbaugh Press:

Post by Randy Stapilus.

Ai, yi, and and an ever lovin' yi. If Randy's source is correct then the circulation at The Formerly Big O is now about 63 percent of what it was … six months ago? 

Six months? 

Holy moly.

I make a lot of fun of the decline of The O. I do it basically to keep from crying and dying inside. Portland, Oregon is the 26th largest city in the fourth most populous country in the history of countries. Our 'daily' (not if you get it delivered any more, it ain't, of course), in its new 'fun size', once had bigger ambitions than the number of clicks it could get on a story at the website. It hurts, so I wiggle my ears and stick my tongue out and remind you all that Tuesday is Soylent News™ day, but I'm not happy about this. Not really. I daren't think they care, either; they stopped caring about my level of the socio-economic strata some time ago.

For a time, I delivered the pape, when I was a younger dude. True story.

A great American city deserves a great American newspaper. Sadly, The Oregonian is no longer that paper. Gone are the voices that used to make it great, and I see no Margie Boulét, no Phil Stanford, and certianly no Jonathan Nicholas (remember him, folks?), no 'appointment column reading'.

But the comics are in color, at least. Yay.

Maybe The Columbian can speak for us? They seem to still publish a newspaper intended for grownups, 7 days a week. The Statesman-Journal's looking better and better, all of a sudden, and at least it's published in the state capital. That ought to count for something.

In the meantime, the readership of Soylent News™ is apparently precipitously dwindling … but, don't think of it as deserting the paper.

We're just conciously decoupling.

Remember, Tuesday is Soylent News™ day.