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One of the most memorable things about a visit to the Te Papa Museum in Wellington has got to be the exhibition of works by typographer Joseph Churchward.

The museum has a room full of original handcrafted type by Churchward, a Samoan-born New Zealander who is still alive and continuing to produce typefaces at 75 years old!

Churchward has crafted more than 500-plus typefaces – one of few typographers who has produced so many different typefaces. Some of his works have been published by Berthold Type Foundry including Churhward  Design, Brush, Tranquillity, Marianna and Tui.

Many of them are still available through foundries such as myfonts (myfonts.com) and identifont (identifont.com).

Churchward is the only New Zealander to have so many typefaces published internationally by big foundries. And one can see why at the exhibition.

Each type is carefully handcrafted using pen and boards and you can see all the white paint used to cover up his sketches, mistakes, fine-tuning and so on.

Remember that many of these faces were created BEFORE the advent of the computer. Churchward clearly understood the mechanics of the printing press, ink trap, dot gain, and other technicalities involved in printing and pre-press.

With Montezuma (second photo below) he cut the letters using a technique which we see on more modern typefaces such as Retina and Amplitude.

What a guy he is!

Here are some photos of the exhibits:

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I hear that Lianhe Zaobao, the Singapore Chinese paper which has to be read with a magnifying glass by at least one reader (see picture below) is thinking of reducing its point size.

Why, I wonder? So they can squeeze more into the pages?

The problem, it seems, stems from the rising cost of newsprint now pushing US$1,000 a ton.

In a move to reduce costs, Singapore Press Holdings newspapers have been told to be careful about increasing the number of pages.  At least one paper in its stable has been told to rethink its design.

Why use so much white space for one story, for instance. Can the story be equally effective using less space?

I think this is a failure to understand design and its impact on readership.

Newspapers are already losing readers by the minute and to make papers more difficult to read and access (via good design) can spell disaster.

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A few days ago, I read this quote from the publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr.:  “Do we need all this news and information? Do we want all this news and information? Can we tolerate all this news and information?”

Unfortunately, not many newspaper editors think like that. They are still churning out stuff we read on the Internet or watched on the TV 24 hours ago. But their crime is made worse by the fact that stories are so lengthy.

The Straits Times in Singapore seems to have gone with longer stories after its recent redesign. There are, on average, two stories in one broadsheet page. That’s way too long.

The Sydney Morning Herald and hundreds of broadsheets around the world this morning are no better.

What’s gone into their heads? Where have they been?

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Do newspapers have a problem? Most assuredly they do!

Look at the way people struggle to read what we journalists produce. I caught this gentleman reading a Chinese language newspaper in Singapore with a magnifying glass which he fished out of his pocket.

Obviously the type size used in the paper is way too small for him.

Yes, he is an elderly person whose eyesight  has dimmed…. but the same can be said of many young people who are completely put off by the dense grey that is plastered all over news pages.

Whatever has happened to good design?

What about websites? What is the optimum width for text?

Patrick Lynch and Sarah Horton have written a very comprehensive style guide to the web. You can find it at http://www.webstyleguide.com/index.html?/contents.html

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Some of the fanciest mastheads I have ever seen are in India.

Take a look at those of four Punjabi newspapers in the picture below. They are (from top) Daily Ajit, Rozana Spokesman, Jag Bani and Punjabi Tribune.

Two weeks ago, I revamped the masthead of Jag Bani, which used to be a lot fancier (second picture). I streamlined the cut and did away with the serifs at the bottom.

The result? The owners of Jag Bani, the Chopra family in Jalandhar, were pleased with the outcome. And so were readers, who felt that the new masthead gave the paper a more modern feel. But more importantly, it looks more distinctive and authoritative.

I know readers don’t buy a newspaper because of the beauty (or lack of) of the mastheads. But it has such an important recognition factor that you cannot afford to use any old masthead.

Usually, when I redesign a newspaper, one of the first things I look at is the masthead. Does it go with the rest of the paper’s typography? Does it project authority? Does it convey to readers a feel and sense of the kind of paper you want it to be? Does it need to be modernised?

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Legendary Sunday Times editor Harold Evans has spoken out about new trends in design that means nothing.

He says in an interview with The Independent of London: “These grand designs must have stories to back them up.”

I agree with him that design is not the solution to declining newspapers, as many editors seem to think when they relaunch their paper without any change to the way the news is presented, new content and new ideas.

Evans, who wrote the five-colume definitive set of journalism books, Editing and Design, 35 years ago, says: “Design can’t be considered without the context, the information. Design is absolutely no substitute for content.”

To read the full interview, go to: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/

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If you are a practising journalist in India, Middle East or Africa, you might want to join the appropriate Journalists Network.

I have created these three networks after finding the need for practising journalists to get together on a site to talk about newspapers, magazines, the media industry, make new friends/contacts, network with each other, and, who knows? maybe even find a job!

Africa, India and the Middle East are vast geographical areas with great diversity. Often, journalists in one country or region may not know colleagues and counterparts in other parts of their territories.

I felt they therefore need a common platform for a meeting of minds. I hope the African Journalists Network, Middle East Journalists’ Network and Indian Journalists’ Network will meet that need.

These are very much like Facebook, where you can meet like-minded colleagues in your region. There will be discussion threads, forums, events listings, photos and so on.

The addresses are:

• http://mideastjournos.ning.com/

• http://africanjournos.ning.com/

• http://indianjournos.ning.com/

Tell your friends in these parts of the world about the networks.

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Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery.

Well, that’s the happy state of affairs at DScene which I helped to launch in Dunedin, New Zealand, a little more than eight weeks ago.

The University of Otago has copied the entire front page of DScene for its student paper, Critic, right down to the masthead and colours. Here are the two images.

Meanwhile, DScene has commissioned Nielsen Media Research to do a study on readership. The results are fantastic for a paper that isn’t even three months old! I mean, how often does a new paper get kudos like this, especially when elsewhere we read dismal stories of newspapers in decline.

Nielsen says 75 per cent of people who received the paper in their mailbox had read it. A majority of them spent between 11 and 30 minutes reading the paper.

And what did readers like about it? The news coverage, entertainment and Life sections, the design and the property section topped their favourites in that order.

Three cheers to the folks at DScene!

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The past two weeks has been days of frenzy in Dunedin and Queenstown, New Zealand.

The two cities are where a newspaper war between New Zealand’s oldest paper, the Otago Daily Times, and the publishers of Mountain Scene, is taking place.

Mountain Scene is launching a free tabloid in Dunedin called DScene. The weekly, which I designed with the help of its Design Editor Orlagh Reidy, will be a 64-page full-colour tab plus a 16-page real estate pullout.

In a tit-for-tat measure, Otago Daily Times launched its own tabloid in Queenstown to compete with Mountain Scene about five weeks ago.

Queenstown Times is a thrice-weekly tabloid of just 8 pages and in black and white. It is distributed free with ODT but can also be bought for 50 cents a copy – versus Mountain Scene’s full-colour, 64-page paper which is distributed free every Friday.

For its launch promotions, DScene has been flooding Dunedin with D-Day posters, flyers and leaflets. Dozens of promoters on fashionable Segway transporters have been distributing D-Day postcards in the city. The entire promotional activities culminate with a launch party on May 30 at Dunedin’s iconic town square, the Octagon, and a party to which its rivals have been invited.

DScene is edited by Garry Ferris, formerly editor of Mountain Scene, and a very experienced journalist who worked on Fairfax’s Sydney 2000 Olympics team, and also the Daily Telegraph in Sydney.

Dunedin has been a one-paper town for as long as one remembers, and so the city’s residents will be in for a surprise when the vibrant and colourful tabloid hits the streets on May 30. DScene will be called a magapaper because it intends to be a newspaper with a magazine bent.

The newspaper war is best encapsulated in the following radio clip on Dunedin’s Nation radio. Click and listen: Nation Radio Clip

Here are some pages from the first edition which hit the streets at 5 am Dunedin time, on Friday May 30.

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Nearly 230 news executives from Europe, Africa, the United States and a few from Indonesia and Australia attended the 7th International Newsroom Summit in Madrid last wee.

I was the last speaker, and my topic was Branding for Print and Online.

Being the last speaker at a two-day conference is always tough. The participants would have died a thousand deaths by Powerpoint by then. And besides, they have had to concentrate on speaker after speaker, many of whom were excellent. Worse of all, it was close to lunch time and people were waiting to eat rather than listen to yet another speaker.

But I think I pulled it off, keeping my presentation short and sharp, with a four-letter word they would remember.

That four-letter word is not what you think. It is S-U-C-K!

S is for Space

U is for Uniqueness

C is for Content, and,

K is for Customers (spelt the German way with a ‘K’ of course, this being a conference organised by the Germany-based Ifra).

I urged newspapers to think about their space and position in the online world. Too many news websites looked and read alike. There is little distinction in news since most newspapers subscribe to Reuters, Bloomberg, AP, AFP and such like.

So they have to think of a unique space and even give up their traditional role of a newspaper.

Readers today are in charge! They would rather choose what they wish to read than being told to read what editors think they should! They have the power to determine that today, and therefore newspapers need to rethink their online content.

For more on the summit, go to www.ifra.com.

Newspapers interested in doing more with their print and online products can contact me anytime.

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