De Telegraaf: The Road to Tabloid, Part 3

Tomorrow is D-Day

Working with the digital team as they create final design for the new website (http://www.telegraaf.nl)

All gears are go, it seems. The templates are completed, the various “rehearsals” for various pages executed, and the wall in the art/design department full of pages that are part of the experimentation project to get ready for this important day in the history of De Telegraaf. Telegraaf art director Hans Haasnoot is a busy man: nobody understands the content management system as Hans does, plus he has worked very closely with our team on the design. He is, as I call him, the man of the hour.

What’s one to do on the day before the big launch of a new format?

If you look around, you see more editors than usual coming by the design desk to ask that essential question about new formats. There is a bit of nervousness in the air, but also plenty of excitement.

While the editors prepare for D Day, readers, meanwhile, are wondering what all the fuss is about and how different their friendly De Telegraaf will be as it lands at their breakfast table Friday morning.

In the readers' miinds

The readers speak about the new tabloid prototype (in Dutch)

Selected readers were exposed to prototype pages. As often happens, their questions had more to do with issues not related to the design. Here are some of the comments:

Will the new Telegraaf fit into my post office box, as it will be thicket?

Hope the big chocolate letters will be smaller (this a reference to the traditional chocolate letters that the Dutch buy in December --see image below).

Hope we can split the newspaper into two sections, since I am married and my wife and I divide the paper to read it each morning.]

Finally, I wil be able to read De Telegraaf on the bus, and maybe I can buy a smaller kitchen table

Will those good big photos remain big in the smaller format?