News Design: The big, bold, static past, in print, is giving way to the digital, multimedia future

When I started in this business in 1969, my weekly newspaper was produced by 55 lb. clichés transferring ink to a sheet on the "rotary." "Internet" had not entered the lexicon and the web was something E.B. White had placed Charlotte in the center of.

After numerous fits and starts, newspaper design has become an integrated part of the newsroom. Technology has given us the ability to create pages and presentations that were in the realm of science fiction 30 years ago.

Where printed newspapers had a walk-jog-running start in changing the visual presentation of the products, Web-based newspapers were just thrown into the ocean and told to swim. We really didn't know quite how to use this shinny new means of delivery, and for the first five years most newspaper Web sites looked like the newspaper in print.

Some newspaper companies developed the "bottomless pit" vision, others the "cannibal" vision. The "bottomless pit" site included all the news, fit to print or otherwise. With screen after screen of text with little tiny headlines to break up the boredom, it was the industry's cure for insomnia. The Melbourne Age ran one story for 15 full screens in 1998, not a positive way to encourage readers.

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While the newspaper design revolution has had 25 years to transpire, the effective time period for newspaper Web-site design has been less than 10 years, and probably closer to six. Yet in some ways, Web design has surpassed print. The Web has given us the opportunity to integrate movement and sound with our news and information. This calls for a completely different way of thinking about design.

Where print media is static and two-dimensional, the Web can be active and multi-dimensional (while still presented in two dimensions).

Design in both mediums have striking parallels. As print designers began to discover that organization and navigation were high on the reader's priority list, Web designers quickly discovered that viewers were not willing to scroll through countless screens or click through numerous pages looking for what they wanted. There are sites like The Scotsman that realized the value of aiding the viewer from the beginning.

Harmony, simplicity and ease of use is exemplified in a few, but growing number of sites. One that has been consistent in this area is the Morgenpost.

The New London Day is the Morgenpost's opposite. It is an active site but almost overwhelming in the volume of material the viewer has to wade through - it is a site rapidly approaching information overload.

Others, like the Bild Zeitung seem to go out of their way to assault the viewer. Even taking cultural aspects into consideration, this site is hyperactive with far too much to navigate.

In print we saw the growth of the A-1 rail or panel, and strong identifiers, or signatures, on inside pages. In the cyber world, we see the rail translated to either a horizontal navigation bar, a vertical direction panel, or both. You may have noticed the verb tenses in the last two sentences. Many newspapers have dropped the refer briefs panel on A-1, even though the Readership Institute's findings (PDF) indicate customers see this device a top benefit. Go figure.

While print publications have moved away from this valuable device, their online brothers and sisters have embraced it. Some good examples include: The News Observer The Mercury News And for simplicity, The Pantagraph

Another print device that made a comeback and then disappeared in many newspapers was the "intro" or "leadin" to a story. Once again, readers were quick to point out that these devices gave them more information than the headline and allowed them to make a decision on whether to read the story or be satisfied with what they had already read.

Online we now see this "blurb" technique used extensively. MSNBC, Washingtonpost.com, CNN, and others use feature blurbs with links to full stories. Many viewers will read the head and the blurb, and feel they have enough information; If they want more, it's just a click away. They have more control, more quickly, over what they read.

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Print folks no longer fear "scooping ourselves" online. The term itself is a prime indicator that someone in the print business has the wrong perspective. For our very survival, we have to get over the fact that we are newsPAPER organizations and accept the fact that we are information organizations.

The Dallas Morning News put this red herring to rest inadvertently. When it acquired information on Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, they broke the news on the Web, on Feb. 27, 1997. The industry was abuzz. I heard comments like, "They really had guts to do that before getting it in print," when, in fact, they were expecting to be enjoined from publishing the material in print and had posted it on the Web to beat an injunction.

Did the circulation of the daily drop? No, it went up. Did other media outlets pick the story up? Yes, and they gave credit to the DMN Web site as the source. Did they "scoop themselves?" No, they provided another avenue of information that actually increased the demand for the daily paper.

Overall, the design of the print product can be far more spectacular in static display than on the Web site. It can be larger and the only thing we have to move are our eyes. We have the full 11.5 - 13 inches wide by 21+ inches deep to play with. Some of that playing IS spectacular, and very appealing to older, loyal readers.

As George Bernard Shaw said, "Youth is wasted on the young." We now have a generation and a half that are as comfortable with a computer as their parents are with a newspaper. They don't mind, and probably never think about, the confines of a 17- 19- or 20-inch monitor. They are far more adept and often far more captivated with Flash, RealAudio, Quicktime, AVI and the other panoply of sound-and-fury-producing media on the Web.

They are demanding of these features online, and somewhat forgiving of the lack of accompanying text. I know I was clicking, watching and listening to embedded journalists' reports from Iraq during the war. It certainly adds another dimension seeing them bump along in a Humvee and listening to them describe exactly what is happening around them.

This is where the future lies. It will be a future of immediate access (after you get through all the ads and spam), delivered by yet-to-be-created technologies. Web design has already become interactive, allowing viewers to examine parts of a sequential graphic, or to see a virtual tour of Saddam Hussein's palaces. Future design on the Web will be keyed to the simplistic.

As architect Mies van der Rohe said, "Less is more," and that is exactly the direction visionary sites are taking. Soon we will be able to provide a verbal list of wants to our computer as we pass it on the way to our morning shower. It will be packaged, delivered and preformatted with our personal preferences. You might get it as video, video and audio, or a print version - in color, of course.

However, the "less is more" concept does not apply when sites contain little or no information and don't offer the viewer quick ways to get to the information they want. Even smaller newspapers and Web sites need to provide the substance. This is the "where's the beef" principle. Sites like the Coffeyville Journal, for example, need to offer more.

Perhaps one of the best examples of where we might be headed is the Mercury, in Manhatten, Kansas. This is certainly an example of "less is more," with the simple delivery of structured menus. It is a bit bland but that is an easy fix. The design allows for a quick overview and faster decision making and creates a more enjoyable experience.

Newspaper print design will see fewer and fewer original or breakthrough innovations. We are limited by the present printing technology, the substrate we print on, and the size of the product. This doesn't mean that we won't be printing newspapers with creative, visually attractive, pleasing and legible designs. It means that there are only so many ways you can treat a nugget box on A-1, a briefs panel on B-4, or obits in the C section.

The future of design lies in other means of delivery. The design will be exquisitely complex in its simplicity and we, as consumers, will be able to focus on our information needs, and probably be more enlightened for it.