TAKEAWAY: Trade that word redesign for the more practical rethink.
The great Tyler Brulé, the guru of nice, said it best. In one of his recent Financial Times The Fast Lane columns, and while providing advice for hotels and restaurants, Tyler reminded them that “if your restaurant or hotel is doing a roaring business, then it properly means guests are comfortable to the environment……Familiar environments are those with a few dents and dings. When in doubt, don’t renovate.“
How appropriate and sensible.
It is exactly what I recently told an editor at a conference, who asked me how often one should “redesign” a newspaper.
First, I told him, “redesign” is the wrong term. Rethink is more like it.
Tyler got it right: if your readers are happy and coming back, then chances are you don’t need to change things too much. If, however, your circulation is dropping across all platforms (this is NOT a print paper only type of crisis), then you need to rethink your content strategy. Ask yourself these questions:
Are we still catering to a readership that is no longer there?
Are we still publishing for a city that ceased to be the way it was two decades ago?
Are we still a newspaper aimed at a target audience that has abandoned reading the newspaper and decided to go elsewhere for information?
Whatever the reasons, don’t contemplate a cosmetic redesign as the panacea to other problems. A purely design-driven remake of your publication WILL NOT save it when content strategies, audience reach and value to advertisers have all but ceased to be positive.
That is why, even when a well intentioned potential client writes me with an invitation to “redesign”, I quickly engage him in a conversation about a rethink. You will be surprised the number of times that our intervention has more to do with a change of strategy and less with a change of fonts.
Even in newspapers and magazines, a few dents and dings, the so called lived in look may contribute to making your publication dwell in the realm of the familiar. It is with content selection and storytelling where we don’t need to see traces of dents and dings.
So, when in doubt, don’t think redesign, think rethink.
WAN IFRA: 6th Tablet & App Summit
October 7-8, Berlin
I am honored to be part of this program in which I will conduct about four different presentations dealing with storytelling across platforms, tablet edition design, the media quartet and the importance of design in today’s multi platform world.
There are still some places left for those wishing to attend the WAN IFRA 6th Tablet & App Summit.
Overview of the event:
http://www.wan-ifra.org/events/6th-tablet-app-summit
Program overview:
http://www.wan-ifra.org/events/6th-tablet-app-summit?view=sessions
Mario Garcia’s presentation:
http://www.wan-ifra.org/events/speakers/mario-garcia-1