Media

Style over substance?

By: George Hari Popescu

Newspaper design is a fascinating reflection of the times we live in. Vivid reports from the 9th European Newspaper Design Congress and demonstrates how the Romanian style of press design is building its own identity for the European market

Posted: 07/07/2008

What makes a good newspaper? The cover page, the op-ed pages, the colour, the overall look and feel? Speakers at this year's European Newspaper Congress agreed on one thing: a good newspaper has to have the best press designers in town, but also substance. At this year's congress and European Newspaper Award in Vienna, representatives of both national and local publications throughout Europe met to paint the big picture of the state of print design and set the trends for 2008 and beyond.

main characteristics are well-executed infographics, large font size headlines and informative sidebars.

The main characteristics of Romanian press design are well-executed infographics, large font size headlines and informative sidebars.

At the ninth edition of the European Newspaper Congress, representatives of two Romanian newspapers returned home with prizes. Business Standard, a nationwide financial and business publication from Bucharest received no less than five prizes, and Viata libera, the main local newspaper distributed in Galati received an award for front page design - the second time this competition had commended its front page design.

The organiser of the event, the designer Norbert Kupper, emphasised the fact that there is a Romanian style of press design that is building its identity on the European market. Kupper said that its main characteristics are well-executed infographics, large font size headlines and informative sidebars. Although this style is inspired by large European and world newspapers, Romanian publications have tried to integrate all the technological and style innovations in the overall content of the page and of the newspaper.

Romania's winners have followed the trends of the year on the continent: service boxes (sidebars) have become very popular, and they often accompany the article and contain facts and figures and other information otherwise hard to read in a traditional style of layout. Sometimes, service boxes are set beside lead articles, capturing the news from a different angle.

This trend, together with colours and large photographs, have characterised a new era for daily newspapers, in which dailies increasingly resemble weekly and monthly publications. The term "magazine-like newspapers" was coined by Scandinavian tabloid-format newspapers whose pages with their broken-up layout and lots of white space bear a strong resemblance to magazines.

Another characteristic of Romanian newspapers is their reduced emphasis of text in favour of illustrations, photos and white space. Newspapers could thus be perceived as works of art spun out on a regular basis in an attempt to compete with television and the Internet. Peter Linden, a lecturer in journalism and a speaker at the conference, said that this was not necessarily a bad thing. He reminded delegates that other countries followed a similar trend. In the German language, he pointed out, phrases are now five words shorter than in the 1960s, because apparently readers subconsciously grab hold of keywords, "a process that triggers a process of visualisation of the story in their minds". This method, along with the visualisation produced by catchy photos, is rapidly becoming popular for designers. Such a trend is seen in newspapers like Business Standard and Capital in Romania. On the common schism between style and content, Peter Linden put it thus: "Kids are happy to see beautifully wrapped gifts, but they are more interested in the content of the box".

The conference learnt that the tabloid format is not as popular as several years ago. Some countries favour it - free daily newspapers in Switzerland are printed in tabloid format. Germany, which has just one tabloid, the Frankfurter Rundschau. Germany loves the Nordic format, but this year will mark the switch of some German publications to the Berlin or tabloid formats.

Colour is still not so popular for broadsheet format newspapers, as publications prefer creating contrast through blank space. Colour still faces some technological challenges and advertisers sometimes prefer monochrome pages for their prints.

Photography is in the midst of a golden era, with large images spread all over the pages. As for fonts, the conference heard a trend toward old font faces and gothic fonts for some weekly and monthly publications.

European Newspaper Award 2008 in figures

288 newspapers from 26 countries participated

86 newspapers from 17 countries received awards of excellence

Countries with most awards: Germany, Sweden, Spain

The jury was formed of 9 members of 8 countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Germany

European Newspaper Award 2008

Best nationwide newspaper: Eleftheros Tipos (Greece)

Best regional newspaper: El Periodico de Catalunya (Spain)

Best local newspaper: The Mayo News (Ireland)

Best weekly publication: Welt am Sonntag (Germany)

Awards for Romanian newspapers:

Viata Libera from Galati