Hotel Courtyard Marriott in Mumbai was the venue for the two-day conference on News Design organized by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (Wan-Ifra), in association with the Society for News Design (SND). The conference, which took place from June 3 to 4, was attended by more than 35 publications from India and abroad. Over two days the topics under discussion were newspaper design and redesign, typography, photo, information graphics and tablet design.
Unique styles
The keynote address of the conference was delivered by world- renowned newspaper designer Lucie Lacava of Canada-based Lacava
Designs, who said that the design must be tailored to content and must speak to the readers in its own unique voice. In her presentation, she showed the audience how various newspapers from across the world have used innovative designs over the years and have created their unique styles.
Among the highlights from the Design and Redesign session on Day 1 was the presentation by Vinod Verma, editor, digital and convergence, Amar Ujala. Verma’s presentation dealt with how Amar Ujala Compact, a sister publication of Amar Ujala, has been designed to meet the demands of
hyper-local markets in Uttar Pradesh. “The whole design of Amar Ujala
Compact is to have maximum focus on local news. Every city has an edition which has a unique local flavor such as the business section dealing with local businesses. This has been well received by readers and Amar Ujala Compact has carved its own identity,” Verma said.
Complete redesign
Another interesting presentation was delivered by Sachin Kalbag, editor of Mumbai-based Mid-Day in which he told the delegates about how the newspaper has gone for a complete redesign recently. The Mumbai afternoon paper has increased its focus on Mumbai city. The paper is now divided into four broad sections apart from the front page — Hitlist,
Guide, Sports and Classified. All stories have a short introduction and bullet points to highlight key elements.
Kalbag said a new section called the ‘Sunshine Page’ has been added which shows positive things about the city. “The idea of this page was to feature the brighter side of Mumbai. It speaks about people who are trying to make a positive difference to the city.”
Day 2 of the conference began with a talk by John Niedermeyer, deputy editor digital design, NYTimes.com who spoke on the topic of news design for digital platforms. Niedermeyer
showed how various stories were designed and conceived for the New York Times digital platform. Citing an example of a story of a reporter’s journey through Russia, from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, Niedermeyer showed how lots of interactive features were incorporated with the written story.
Role of fonts
Among the many speakers on the second day, the talk by professor GV Sreekumar was particularly interesting. Sreekumar spoke on the role of fonts in the future of communication. Speaking about the role of fonts he said it is a bridge between the content and the reader as publications create identity by using specific fonts.
In the context of India, Sreekumar said that Indian vernacular languages face an issue of limitation of fonts and creating font design in Indian languages is a challenge. To tackle this problem awareness has to be created about design in India.
The conference was wrapped up with a talk by Haika Hinze, art director, DIE ZEIT, Germany. DIE ZEIT has won SND ‘World’s Best Designed’ award six times, more than any other newspaper in the world. Hinze showed the audience the newspaper’s classic design styles.
