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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The design competition of Estonian newspapers took place for the tenth time.

There were three categories in this year competition (overall design, front pages, news and feature pages). 19 newspapers entered their pages. Estonian best designed newspapers 2008 are Õhtuleht (circ. over 20.000) and Oma Saar (circ. under 20.000). In the category of front pages jury gave out five silver awards and in the category of news pages two gold and one silver award.

You can see all awarded entries in the webpage News Design / Estonia (www.newsdesign.eall.ee).

And an interview as well.

Olen saanud mitu viimast aastat osaleda Eesti Ajalehtede Liidu fotokonkursi žüriis ning üks asi, mis ikka ja jälle kripeldama on jäänud, on see, et konkursile esitatakse hirmus vähe spordifotosid. Neid peaaegu pole esitatudki. Viimase konkursi järgi võiks näiteks arvata, et Eesti spordifotograafe Pekingi olümpiamängudel toimunu üldse ei huvitanud. Kindlasti pole see nii, kui vaadata iga päev meie ajalehti, kuid millegipärast konkursil spordifotosid pole. Sport aga ei alga ja lõpe kindlasti mitte ainult olümpiavõitjate pildistamisega, hea spordifoto võib saada ka näiteks lasteaedade spordipäevalt.

Seepärast otsustasin, et korraldan täiesti iseseisva spordifoto konkursi. Äkki ärgitab see sporti pildistavaid fotograafe rohkem pingutama ning ka spordifotosid rohkem märkama. Loodetavasti tahavad sporti pildistavad fotograafid, et nende pilte võrreldakse ja ritta sätitakse. Aga peaeesmärk on ikkagi see, et spordifotot rohkem märgataks. Ja et spordifoto areneks.

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