Monday November 16th is a milestone in the history of Helsingin Sanomat, the largest newspaper by circulation in the Nordic region, and it is also a moment when the present staff turn a new page, writes HS in their international edition.  It was on this day 120 years ago that Helsingin Sanomat’s immediate predecessor Päivälehti first made its appearance in 1889, and today has also been chosen for the launch of a new look for the daily newspaper.

The most obvious changes for the readers of the print paper will come in the shape of a new font for headlines and body texts, as those behind the venture have sought above all to improve clarity and readability.

 

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After more than six months of planning, preparation and speculation, November 2 saw the first edition of Germany’s redesigned political and financial daily Handelsblatt, writes editorsweblog.org.

The Garcia Media redesign signifies a milestone in German press, as the publication is the first quality German newspaper to make the decision to switch from the broadsheet to the compact size. As Garcia himself points out, other publishers will now be watching and gauging reactions, and asking themselves whether they should now take a similar step.

 

This year the best designed newspapers in Europe come from Sweden, Germany, Portugal and Croatia, writes in your webpage newspaper designer Norbert Küpper.  A total of 241 newspapers from 27 countries participated in the 11th European Newspaper Award. Awards of Excellence are given to 108 newspapers in 21 countries.

The awards for best design and concept got in category local newspaper Smålandsposten, Sweden, in category regional newspaper Stuttgarter Zeitung, Germany, in category nationwide newspaper I informação, Portugal. Judges’ Special Recognition got newspaper 24sata, Croatia.

 

More information you cad read in the European Newspaper Award webpage.

Estonian newspapers got three awards in this contest, all for the front pages. These newspapers are Postimees, Tartu Postimees and Äripäev.

 

In the end of August Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet hit the streets in a new design. The readers could finally see the results of a years hard work.

The art director of SvD Anna W Thurfjell write about this in the SNDS webpage:

The strengths of the newspaper are different from the online. On the web it’s breaking news, reports in ‘real time’, and the materials that are unique for the web, the strengths of the newspaper is to give ‘orderly’ to give a clear picture of the news, storytelling and the experience of reading the paper with a good layout.

 

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It’s good to look, enjoy and design great/big visual things in newspapers.

I noticed some big things in estonian newspapers, which usually mean a big fotograph. When it comes to the big song festival it’s only natural that Postimees and Eesti Päevaleht had the same idea (how else can you show crowd of people and emotion. I don’t think that 6 column photo could achieve the same power). I would like to see more this kind of courage in estonian newspapers, even now in the tough times and not only in every 4 years during the song festival.

 

This kind of story happened to the American newspaper – Hartford Courant, which is actually the oldest persistently released newspaper in America.

In september of 2008 the newspaper came out with a new design, in which the masthead was radically changed: instead of the traditional horizontal masthead, there was the vertical one. At that time the newspapers’ director of design Melanie Shaffer said that they also wanted to put a reference to online, which meant they wanted to use dot-com in their logo. Shaffer said that during that time the change seemed good and innovative.

Unfortunately the readers didn’t agree.

The readers’ disapproval made the newspaper carry out a quick poll, in which they wanted to know what kind of masthead the readers want. 95 percent demanded the horizontal masthead. They got what they wanted.

 

This year they gave the yellow pencil award among the D&AD awards to the portuguese newspaper – Publico. In the category of magazine and newspaper design. New York Magazine received three awards in the same category.

This year they didn’t give out the black pencil award, which is more prestige. In 2006 the new design of The Guardian received the black pencil award.

 

The estonian goalkeeper Mart Poom announced about his retirement. In estonian sport this is definitely big event and also important to the newspapers or so I believe. The biggest newspaper in Estonia – Postimees placed Poom on the front page, so it’s clearly important.

In my opinion this is also important event to the newspaper designers and not only the designers but all the people who are active in making those current pages, because now is the opportunity to make those pages more interesting, bigger, exciting, powerful and visually diverse than everyday pages. Poom is most definitely worth it.

To add more excitement: you can compare how did the different estonian newspapers, like Postimees, Eesti Päevaleht and Õhtuleht, solve this problem.

 

The papers with the «Best newspaper design» in Russia 2008 are the Moscow newspaper Aktzia and Svobodny Kurs (Barnaul). These newspapers got a silver award in the sixth edition of the Russian newsdesign award.

 

The winners were chosen from a field of 48 newspapers representing different regions of Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Kazakhstan.

The seven competition categories awarded four gold medals, 11 silver, 16 bronze, 23 awards of excellence. The gold medal were awarded to Aktzia (the front pages), Delovoy Peterburg (infographics), Delovaya Gazeta Jug (photography) and Svobodny Kurs (photography).

The more winners you can see in the SND Update.

The Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter is the best designed newspaper in Scandinavia. The newspaper received the only gold medal for best news design at the Scandinavian news design contest.

 

71 media houses from all of the Nordic countries were represented in the contest. Apart from the gold medal 16 silver diplomas, 17 bronze diplomas and 36 awards of excellence were handed out at the conference.

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