More than a face-lift

Thus, the Sunday, August 1^st issue of the Bangkok Post must have been a bit of shock to many of our readers. Bang! All at once, a completely new look. Oh yes, the familiar Bangkok Post masthead was still there, but if you looked closely even that had been sharpened, reduced in size and given a new drop shadow.

There have also been changes to the weekday editions, but they are nowhere near as dramatic. The editorial and design team was understandably reluctant to tamper too much with a format that was already clean and easy to read, an important consideration for readers as busy as the Bangkok Post audience.

For the past several weeks, the learning post has been following the preparation and the implementation of the new design which was timed for the newspaper’s 58^th birthday. We have talked to our chief editors, section editors and, of course, members of the design staff. At the same time, the learning post itself has been affected since we, for the first time really, are having to strictly conform to the Bangkok Post style guide.

The experience has been enlightening one and is well worth sharing with our readers, especially with the many students who get the learning post through their schools. With the massive amounts of information available to us nowadays, presentation is becoming increasingly important. Indeed, how our messages look can often determine whether they will even be read.

Here the designers and layout artists are often the unsung heroes. “Writers always try to put out their best in text and to use that text to communicate with their readers,” explains Somyuth Lertpitiwatana who heads the Bangkok Post design team. “We also think in the same way. We communicate with the same reader but through our design. We care about the look of the page.”

The chief responsibility for the initial Sunday and weekday designs fell to Andrew Hiransomboon, who, incidentally, also did the basic design for our popular Post Today Thai newspaper.

“What I was trying to do was give the readers more choice, especially on the front page and section fronts with the teaser elements (brief summaries and graphics) and information boxes and to present them in a way that is new for the Bangkok Post. I wanted more modern-looking typefaces, more colour and information boxes and more graphics.

Andrew’s scope was limited for weekdays, but he and his team were given considerable leeway with the Sunday edition, a freedom he clearly appreciated.

“Sunday could be really good,” Andrew says. “They’ve allowed us to be a little more creative. On Sunday, the typography’s the opposite of what we did in the regular paper with sans sirif headings, news features up front. There are supposed to be more pictures and more die-cuts (cutout pictures).

“The logic on Sunday is that we figure that readers have more time. For the daily paper we use a lot of labels to make it quick and easy for everybody. On Sundays, there won’t be the need for labels because we’re going to have second decks (secondary headlines) on all these stories.”

Andrew has also produced a lengthy and beautifully illustrated style guide for the layout artists. It details all the basic story modules, elements like headlines, bylines, labels and logos as well as special elements such as television listings, sidebars and statistics. There are even design variations for major news events such as the outbreak of war.

Section editors have also played a role in the new design. Outlook’s Atiya Achakulwisut, for example, had very definite ideas on what her section needed. “The task that we gave the design team was to make Outlook look more modern, but not frivolous. We wanted to retain the substance of the section.”

At the same time, Atiya says her team has had to take more responsibility for the presentation as well. “It’s not just about giving it a modern look. We are trying to make our stories shorter, maybe putting more than one story on the front so that readers have a choice. We try to have a focal point on each page and we let the design bring that out to our readers.”

The trick throughout the design process was to freshen up the look of the paper without straying too far from what was already a very functional design. “Above all,” says Bangkok Post editor Kovit Sanandang, “we wanted to maintain the strength of the paper, it’s brand identity. This is a brand that has been around for 58 years. People know it. This is their newspaper, a newspaper they can trust. That’s the strength of the paper.”

That brand identity was solidified significantly as a result of the last major redesign, an intensive two-year process that was completed in 1996. According to Bangkok Post editor-in-chief Pichai Chuensuksawadi, who oversaw the revamp, the initial focus was on on content.

“A redesign means a re-evaluation of your content, to study whether that content is relevant to your readers and whether you presenting the news which is of relevance, value and interest to your reader,” Pichai explains.

“That’s number one. And, number two, as a result of that, you determine how you present that content in a more reader-friendly and accessible way.”

Many of the elements of that presentation have been maintained by the current design team. The styles are standardised and consistent throughout the various sections of the newspaper, making it truly one unified newspaper. Graphics continue to play an important role, helping to make complex issues more digestible to the reader.

“One fundamental change of the previous design was no spills (i.e., news stories begin and end on the same page), Pichai observes. “That continues. I think that’s a good policy to continue. That’s one of the main features of Post Today which is attractive for a lot of readers.”

While content changes are not as dramatic as they were in the previous redesigns, readers will find much that is new. The Wednesday Database IT section, for example, seized on the new design as an opportunity to begin a shift away from the focus on expensive computer hardware to the smaller mobile and wireless devices that are taking the business and consumer market by storm.

“We’re embracing new content that reflects the trend to consumer digital equipment, the gadgets, the digital cameras, the whole range of ‘new toys’ that people are using these days,” section editor Tony Waltham explains.

“We have so many gadgets coming out now that it’s kind of confusing to the reader. This type of content also lends itself to pictures, so Database with be more colourful, definitely,” Waltham adds.

The Friday real.time section has been almost completely revamped, according to its editor Prapai Kraisornkovit.

“There are a lot of changes in both presentation and content,” she says. “In terms of content, there are new columns. We’re also expanding the dine and wine – the eating out pages into two. The ‘what’s on’ section has been redesigned into a kind of a pull out – a section within a section – so that you can keep it for seven days. There has been a rearrangement of the pages to make it more of a weekend leisure, entertainment type of a section.”

The Sunday Outlook section follows a similar theme. “It is sort of a lifestyle, constructive leisure package,” says editor Atiya.

“We inform our readers about what they can do with their free time – not only activities, but as a guide for the mind.”

There is also an abundance of new material including rotating columns on gardening, fun in the home, family matters, all accompanied by do-it-yourself tips, Atiya says. In addition, Sunday Outlook is taking over the science and technology that formerly appeared on Wednesday.

The Sunday Perspective section has received a welcome facelift. Naturally text-heavy because of in it’s in-depth reporting and analysis, it now has a lighter, fresher, more weekend-friendly look.

“I think its good for Perspective because the new design looks completely different,” comments section editor Songpol Kaopatumtip. “We have teasers on top of the page and I think that’s very attractive. We also have a photo essay and a new column on page two called Insight.

“Insight is not just an interview,” Songpol stresses. “We look at a newsmaker then we analyse his/her character. It takes a lot of time. You have to talk to a lot of people, not just to the person in the news. You have to look for reactions or comments from people who like him and people who may not like him.”

The workload has increased for the weekday sections as well. Although the changes may be subtle, there are surprisingly large number of them and, for the first two weeks at least, page layout has been noticeably more time-consuming.

“It’s harder. It’s definitely more fiddly,” observes sports editor Roger Crutchley. “We have more logos and more information boxes highlighting special aspects of the main story. We’ll also have a few more die-cuts than we have done in the past, but we’ll be careful not to overdo that because it can make it difficult to read.”

That would defeat the purpose of the new design, Crutchley says. “The idea is that it will be easier for readers to pick up what they want to know.”

The learning post has had it somewhat easier than most sections as the content has remained largely the same. There have been significant changes behind the scenes, however, and that will be our topic next week.