just rambling

my paper’s redesign: a failure of the bilingual policy

When my paper started in June 2006, it was an all-Chinese daily. A year later, it revamped as a bilingual freesheet divided into an English section and Chinese section. On Monday, the paper was revamped again, and taglined as “The Best of Both Worlds” and no long “my life, my thoughts, my say”.The evolution of this three-year old paper seems to mirror the failure of the bilingual policy that MM Lee confessed to last week.

Before this revamp, the paper was equally divided between the two languages, with each fronting a cover. The English section opened from right to left and the Chinese section began from the back page, which interestingly followed how Chinese books are traditionally read, from left to right. In this new design, the Chinese section is now a separate insert while a new Business section takes over the back page.

This seems to reflect the reality of the Singapore readership. An English reader is unlikely to touch the Chinese section and vice versa, so why not make one paper more useful to two different set of readers instead?

To better appeal to English readers, my paper has also added a Business section. As English is the language of commerce here, this section is not available in Chinese. This addition helps it better fight Today, its competitor in the free-sheet business. Till now, the latter had the advantage of providing commercial news. The new design also promises to be more advertiser-friendly (like Today?). But, do we really need another newspaper covering business too?

Today's back page

my paper's back page

Commercially it might make sense, but I’m not sure if it provides diversity or even distinguishes it from the market.

The only distinguishing fact of my paper now is its billingual content. Isn’t that why it now calls itself “The Best Of Both Worlds”?  Not, if you read its revamp advertisements closely. The paper is really trying to bring together “More Business news accentuated with Lifestyle features”.

In fact, how billingual is this paper? It really is two papers in different languages put together. For select stories, there is a Helpdesk, a section attached to provide the translation of words in both languages but do readers really use it? The paper may claim to have had an increased in readership, but it doesn’t say if it’s because of the paper’s bilingual content. Plus, the latest design of the paper — moving the Chinese section to be an insert — further reinforces this idea of two separate papers.

Observing how Chinese has been gradually moved from the paper’s mainstay to become a novelty factor is an indictment of how billingualism has failed here. And, if it’s true that my paper went bilingual upon MM Lee’s suggestion, then it is just a manifestation of the failure of this policy.

Interpreting Typefaces of Singapore’s Newspaper Nameplates

A few posts ago, I introduced the typefaces of Singapore’s English newspaper nameplates and who else uses them. This time, I’ll interpret them and see if they might mean anything at all!

Barnhurst’s Seeing The Newspaper is a great book on visual journalism and in one chapter, he looks at typography and meaning through a typeface’s origins in history and its use in that society.

The meanings assigned to type by readers and typographers seem to spring not form some objective code but from the cultural experience common to both groups.
Barnhurst, Seeing The Newspaper, p.155

With his words in mind, here is my take on the nameplates!

Typeface: Big Caslon (Straits Times)

Based on a humanistic handwriting by printers in Italy before 1500, Big Caslon is a modern day recreation of the original typeface by William Caslon of England in 1725. Back then, Caslon was very popular and even used in the US Declaration of Independence. The saying went, “when in doubt, use Caslon”. It seems appropriate for ST to use such a historic and serious typeface as “the paper of record” but it is also a safe and un-imaginative choice.

Typeface: Times New Roman

The default typeface in Microsoft Word for several years, Times New Roman was created by Stanely Morison and Victor Lardent for London’s The Times newspaper in 1931. It’s hard to go wrong with a typeface designed for newspapers but its ubiquity also suggests that TODAY was not really thinking out of the box. And for some reason, to be a serious newspaper here, you have to use a British typeface.

Typeface: Helvetica Neue (The New Paper)

Perhaps the most well-known popular typeface today, Helvetica was created as a neutral sans serif typeface that had great clarity and no intrinsic meaning. Indeed, TNP’s choice of this Swiss typeface reflects its readership and news — simple and familiar to the masses. There is no need for frills when this tabloid’s content is already full of sex, violence, gossip, soccer…

Typeface: Frutiger

Sans serif typefaces, like this one, came about in the 19th century and was first used in advertising displays. This particular one is another Swiss typeface and designed by Adrian Frutiger for directional signs for an international airport in France.

What better way to report about business by using a typeface they made their own? This one has an international appeal to boot too.

Typeface: Freight Sans

Being part of The Business Times, this nameplate cannot deviate a lot from its main paper. The choice of this pretty new typeface seems like a update with the times plus a touch of lightness for the weekend crowd. The typeface’s creator Joshua Darden says Freight Sans is “designed for warm formality in text and an authoritative, helpful tone in display” — indeed.

Typeface: Myriad

Used by Apple Computer since 2002, this paper probably wants to identify itself with the younger generation, so speak the language of one of the most popular brands amongst the youth today?

Typeface: TheSans

It’s Sunday and the last thing you want is to be greeted by a serious paper the first thing in the morning. Thus, the choice of this typeface by Dutch designer Luc(as) de Groot seems appropriate since it is marketed as a “useful-yet-friendly, all-purpose contemporary sans-serif”. Until you realise it is also “the face of thousands of organisations, publications and web sites”, but then it has to stay safe like its main paper, The Straits Times, too.

Typefaces of Singapore Newspaper Nameplates

Here’s a list of the nameplates of Singapore’s english newspapers and what typefaces they use. I’ve also included popular contemporary references that also use the same typeface, maybe the choice of usage says something about the paper?

Typeface: Big Caslon (Straits Times)
You might have seen it: Foreign Affairs (headline) and The New Yorker (body text)

Typeface: Helvetica Neue (The New Paper)
You might have seen it: Everywhere (even a film made about it)

Typeface: Frutiger
You might have seen it: National University of Singapore

Typeface: Freight Sans (The Business Times)
You might have seen it: Reader’s Digest (logo)

Typeface: Myriad (my paper)
Also used by: Apple Inc

Typeface: TheSans
You might have seen it: Sprint

Typeface: Times New Roman
You might have seen it: Default font for Microsoft Word prior to Microsoft Office 2007

Redesigning newspapers and why it matters

One point, or approximately 0.04 cm, was all it took for readers to find the recently redesigned Sunday Times a comfortable read again. After its redesign in April 2008,several readers complained that it was hard to read the paper’s body copy so designer Peter Thomas Williams increased its leading (amount of space between lines of text) from 11 point to 12 point and to his delight, the week after, a reader sent in an e-mail saying it was much easier to read it.

This is why Peter, who has redesigned ST (twice), The Sunday Times and designed tabla! and my paper, starts every project by working on the typography of its body copy. My Paper proved a challenge for the Irish because he had to design a newspaper that incorporated both the English and Chinese language. He did this by using similar colours and grid system, and picking matching typefaces that unified the disparate languages on to one paper.

While he says that “proper” redesigns usually take up to a year, the recent ST redesign was done in six months, partly to coincide with the launch of ST’s new video news platform Razor TV.  A redesign should not be rushed because it is not just a matter of deciding on a new look but it takes time to introduce it to the sub-editors and into the computer systems, “You can’t just redesign a newspaper and walk away, the hard part is implementing it down the line.” he said.

But didn’t ST redesign in 2004? Peter said that newspapers today redesign every 2 to 3 years in an effort to stay relevant to its readers. In fact, in the most recent redesign, they considered reducing the nameplate to just “ST” because it was known to most of its readers as that.

On a daily basis, one of the biggest challenge in designing a page is working around advertisements says Peter, “The less ads the more beautiful your pages are going to be… SPH (papers) are full of ads.”. He pointed out that the winning designs awarded annually by the Society of News Design rarely have any advertisements on them, but the design editor of my paper is realistic, “That’s where we get our bonuses and your paycheck, so we can’t really complain that much.”

—

In the previous part of this interview, The Paginator asks Peter the importance of typography in news design and how the papers of Singapore Press Holdings chooses its typefaces

What type of newspaper are you?

A day before ST’s latest redesign launch, the typeface for its masthead was changed from Popular (only shred of it left is in ‘THE’) to Big Caslon, said Peter Thomas Williams who was part of the redesign team. While Popular failed to live up to its name, because it was thought to be “western” and “old-looking”, Peter, who is also design editor of my paper, said that the biggest factor when he chooses typefaces in his eight years of working in Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), is actually cost.

While he declined to go into specifics, one can do the math based on price lists online. Purchasing one typeface like Big Caslon for use on up to 1000 computers would already cost more than S$5,000. Considering the ST redesign itself involved about four typefaces, multiply that to the cost of installation for more than a thousand computers in SPH and one begins to see how cost becomes a major factor in his typeface choices.

It was on such an “extreme budget” that led Peter, who used to work in a design consultancy in Ireland and as a visual communications lecturer in South Africa, to draw the nameplate of SPH’s Indian diaspora newspaper, Tabla, instead of purchasing a typeface. This was based on three different typefaces: Popular and Calvert for Tabla and the exclamation mark from Bauer Bodoni, which he felt looked like the Indian architectural style.

Costs aside, another important factor is the amount of space a typeface takes up, especially for use as body copy. If it is designed for newspaper use, a typeface is usually efficient in its space management, having a shorter x- and y- height (think shorter x and y and applied to all 26 letters) and kerning (space between letters) is even. A typeface that takes up too much space would mean story lengths have to be shortened to keep the same amount of news on a page. “If you choose a typeface that is beautiful but it is knocking off four paragraphs, it is useless.” he said.

A final factor in choosing a newspaper typeface is how intricate it is as newspapers are printed on paper quality that is “like toilet paper”.  Thus, a font with intricate serfis would not come out looking good as the ink is likely to seep causing such details to be lost.

—

In the next part of this interview, The Paginator asks Peter how it was like redesigning ST twice, The Sunday Times and My Paper.