dream on
A friend's criticism of the appearance of The Desert Sun's print product got me thinking about one of the things that I've yet to see from many news organizations on the Web. Since my latest response seemed to include too many words and links for Facebook's liking, I've decided to move the conversation here.
11:59 » In the time it took me to get everything formatted over on this end, the response did start appearing on Facebook. Le sigh.
In case you haven't been following along on Facebook, here's what you missed:
Jayel at 20:06: It looks like someone at the Desert Sun forgot to left justify their columns. This looks pretty horrific. http://twitpic.com/3fh5jr
Brian at 20:25: Actually, columns run ragged right throughout the paper. (Look at Political Insider and Answer Man tomorrow; both usually run on B1 and will be ragged right, distinguishing them from the justified news copy.)
Jayel at 20:39: I meant "typographic column" not "opinion column." And it looks like that some of the straightforward news articles were also ragged-right.
Brian at 23:07: I know you were talking about the columns of text... but still, the typographic columns that make up an opinion column (which is what's pictured) aren't supposed to be justified. We've made mistakes at TDS, but running Rick's column ragged right isn't one of them.
I haven't seen Sunday's paper because I was off Saturday night, but what news stories ran ragged right?
Jayel at 07:16: I ended up doing some research into this practice and frankly, I am horrified. Typographic decisions like whether or not something is to be justified or ragged-right ought to be design decision. That is, do it because it makes sense aesthetically, not because something is an editorial.
If running Rick's column ragged-right was not a mistake, but an intentional act, then that is worse. It looks horrible.
Jayel at 08:41: I am looking at a copy of the NYT right now and they do the same thing... Except they still hyphenate so it is not as jarring.
Jayel at 08:56: On the other hand, NYT times does not have a consistent baseline either.
(He had earlier noticed and pointed out that lines of text in one TDS story don't line up with those in another story on the same page, as they do in the LA Times.)
In any case, here's the response I typed into Facebook that doesn't seem to show up now that I've refreshed the page:
To make design decisions based solely on aesthetics deprives design of its power to inform.
A page designer thinking only about aesthetics would probably make the headline "Students prepare for finals" larger and more prominent than "18 killed in bus crash" because the "fi" pair looks so pretty.
But any newspaper designer -- and, at least subconsciously, any newspaper reader -- knows that a more important story gets a larger headline. Things like headline size and style, play on a page and placement in the paper convey the comparative importance of a story without using words.
So too does text alignment. Seeing an entire story run ragged right sends a signal to the reader that there's something that distinguishes the Answer Man column that appears on B1 from the lead Valley story at the top of the page. The content of a news story and a column are stylistically different, and so too are their respective presentations.
This is an area where the print product still holds a significant advantage over Web sites because few news organizations do much to visually distinguish between news and editorial content online:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/health/policy/14health.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/opinion/13mon1.html
And I think it's even more important to harness the informative power of design online since people don't have to flip past news pages to arrive at a column or editorial on the Web. Opinion pieces can be reached just as easily as news stories through a Google search or links sent around through e-mail, Twitter or Facebook.
Sometimes we try to convey what is unwritten in print through tweaks to Web headlines:
http://www.mydesert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=201012040366
http://www.mydesert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2010101202014
But few news organizations lean on their Web designers to have them produce something that just *looks* different based on the type of content. The State Press at ASU is headed in this direction with the way their WordPress setup labels columns:
http://www.statepress.com/2010/12/06/bcs-national-championship-game-rewards-innovation/
http://www.statepress.com/2010/12/08/arrest-made-in-kyleigh-sousa-murder-case/
And with WordPress, at least, it doesn't take much work to make even more dramatic stylistic changes based on how an item is categorized:
http://brian.indrelunas.com/?p=8824
http://brian.indrelunas.com/?p=8879
For years, I've been dreaming that newspapers would start harnessing both the power of their CMSes and the power of design to once and for all make it clear to Web readers exactly what kind of article they've landed on from their friend's link or that Google search. But if design can only be used for aesthetics' sake and not to inform, I guess I'd better keep dreaming.