Casa Grande Dispatch mixes funny illustrations and end with a major design-stroke

Oh my God, the friends at Casa Grande Dispatch really did it this time. In consideration for all their efforts, Midialogism is awarding them the Cascatinha Trophy of the Worst Cover Page of the day.

The use of unnecessary ilustrations of hearts is primitive. The rescalling, a complete failure, with a funny distortion as a result. The photographs themselves aren't alarming, but, framed inside the hearts as they are, the final look is dreadful - in a major irony, the cover fail because of cute red hearts.

But the story itself isn't bad. It is a rare case in which the design kills a nice article (usually, bad design and bad stories come together).

This could be the only problem of the page - and that would be enough to call it a noxious example of newsdesign. But no, there's more. In the right side of the page, the lazy hierarchy makes it difficult for the reader to understand what's the most relevant story. Two headlines have the same number of lines (3). The headline at the top, with 4 lines, has less text than the article bellow. Besides the awful black black squares used to punctuate topics.

Shame on me, I found the little firework on top of the logotype funny. But - enough is enough, guys - not the fluffy candies.

Hearts, fireworks, candies - sort of a childish mix, but the problem is not the ingredients chosen. The way Casa Grande Dispatch mix it alltogether is a truly intriguing and funny discover to our day.

Could be a stroke of genius, but it is just a stroke.

(Portuguese version here)

Google buys a... paper industry!

In an ironic move, internet-gigant Google anounced today acquired a mill site from a paper industry based in Finland (Stora Enso).

Not that the top brand will really debut on the print business. Google's interest is probably linked to the construction of another data center to enhance its resources and our web experience. But it is indeed a funny move.

More on TechCrunch

Stora Enso's press release about the deal is crude and insightful:

“Despite tremendous efforts by its employees, the mill cannot compete in today’s and tomorrow’s markets using expensive virgin wood fibre, much of which is imported”.

Not now and not even tomorrow?

(Portuguese version here)

Newsweek's weapons against the crisis. Will it work?

As an article from the "New York Times" revealed, Newsweek, the second largest magazine in the US, will face some major changes in the next months in its struggle to survive.

Modestly, I think that they're on the right track. As Midialogism have been defending, print media got to change to survive, and this evolution will obligatory include more investments on analytical, transparent and collaborative models. Newsweek chose the first path. The idea, as editor Jon Meacham says, is to abandon the model of "obligatory coverage of the week’s big events".

“That’s going away. If we don’t have something original to say, we won’t. The drill of chasing the week’s news to add a couple of hard-fought new details is not sustainable.”

As Newsweek loses money, it must try something different. The solution found is to become smaller - in size, in pages, in target audience - and charge more for its content. It is ridiculous to a Brazilian editor like me to acknowledge the amount currently charged for subscriptions: $25 a year, or 47 cents for each copy.

Here, an annual subscription of the largest magazine of the country, Veja, cost at least US$ 150. It is exactly the same amount charged by Brazil's second largest weekly, Epoca. See the difference? Veja has more than a million subscribers and is doing financially very well, as far as I know.

That's part of the reason why I think the new Newsweek model may succeed.

Problem is: it will debut on very challenging times.

(Portuguese version here)

How (not to) use colors in a newspaper's front page - a Brazilian paper show us

It is tough to avoid awarding the "kaleidoscope" of colors, stories, facts and photos presented by "Amazônia Hoje” newspaper today. It deserves to be honored with the Cascatinha Trophy of the Worst Front Page of the day. The organization of the informative blocks is terrible, almost absent. There’s an all-confused use of colors.

The anchor of the page is the bikini woman, but placed in such way that it is difficult to know if she illustrates the main headline, the “cisne” headline, the “poeta morto” or the “IPTU” story. It also intervenes in an aggressive way on the photo of the policemen, confusing the interpretation of the cop’s image. Similar problem occurs with the cut-out of Ronaldinho at the top of the page - it intervenes with the headline (about robbers) and could be interpreted as part of it, mainly because of the blue color of Ronaldinho’s uniform, that dialogues with the color code of the main headline.

By the way, that’s an excellent chance to talk about the importance of a coherent code of colors (a palette).

The headlines here show us an almost awestruck use of colors. Without a logical code, the orange is used in "tormento", "hemorrágica", and "martins" – stories that do not dialogue between themselves, do not belong to the same thematic groups. The word "Cisne", of the headline at the middle of the page, is unnecessarily written in yellow. And the excess of texts in white over colored backgrounds only makes reading more difficult, without emphasizing the importance of such headlines.

To sum up, the page paints a chaotic scene.

(portuguese version here)

Endangered "New York Times" debates the future of newspapers

"New York Times" – the title itself at great peril - promotes one interesting debate on the future of journalism, with respectable people. Or is the debate about the future of printed papers? We have to take care about the use of synonyms in cases like this.

The culture of free papers is suicidal, the current periodicals are dispensable and will have to change to charge, independent foundations will have to support major journalistic enterprises… there’s an extensive menu of ideas to be debated.

Taste it.

(portuguese version here)

"The Signal" does not signalize anything to its readers

The Signal - Saint Clarita Valley is the true winner of today's Cascatinha Trophy of the Worst Newspaper's Cover Page.It is a less obvious choice, but pedagogic because it signalizes various aspects that simply do not work in the cover page of a newspaper.

It starts being too "heavy". The main image - the visual anchor, as I like to call it - of the page is a logotype! A clue that something is wrong. Especially when we consider that the supposedly 'best' image of the page, a lonely and grey half pipe, does not charm anyone.Hierarquization is another major problem here: no image assumes itself as the dominant element in the page - and, curiously, hierarchy between texts is also unclear.

The headline "FEMA" seems to be the most important story of the page, but presents a smaller text than the 2 stories below ('half pipe' and 'saving').The 2 photos at the top of the page are framing and oppressing the logotype, therefore almost disappear as informative units - seeming to compose the institutional block of the cover page.

Another annoying thing: photographs are like squares, not clearly horizontal or vertical, they do not take the eyes of the reader to another spots of the page, and they are absolutely static, square shaped.I am not totally contrary to the resource of initiating articles at the cover, even so prefer to avoid it (covers are covers, show windows). The way as it’s used here, the resource is condemnable: the verbal language is privileged and clear hierarchies are not established.

(portuguese version here)

Midialogism now in English!

Considering the expressive traffic from the US that this blog in its Portuguese version have been receiving in the past weeks (probably driven by the name of american newspapers as keywords here), Midialogism (a journalist meets Bakhtin and the Discourse Analysis) will from now on be also published in English.

Hope you all excuse minor grammatical errors and leave many many comments to broaden and enrich our discussions here - about newspaper's role in society, newsdesign and the future of this media. No doubt it is a challenging and stimmulating time to discuss such matters.
Welcome!