TAKEAWAY: It’s my favorite daily read, the fabulous New York Times with its unrivaled content. But, when is the NYT app catching up with the rest? PLUS: The London Olympics and those great graphics AND: In Norway, Aftenposten commemorates a date Norwegians will never forget
My first feeling of print envy ever and why
This passenger sitting across from me reading his New York Times made me feel “print envy” as I read same edition on my iPad
I was onboard an American Airlines flight with wifi connection—via Go Go Flight. I pulled my iPad out and refreshed my New York Times app, proceeding to read.
Directly across and in front of me, a man was reading the print edition of the same New York Times that I was reading on the iPad.
My screens seemed heavy with text and very light on any visuals.
The pages of the printed newspaper made me envious. I wanted to be reading these stories with all those nice color photos and graphics.
This exercise—-me looking at this guy’s newspaper as he read it, while I tried to navigate on my iPad to whichever story he was reading in print.
The iPad version paled by comparison.
It does not have to be this way.
I love the content of this New York Times app. I visit it at least three times a day.
I long for the day when the Times puts all that great content into a curated app.
It will be grand, no doubt, and much needed. I imagine that the Times will have to rethink its tablet edition sometime before 2015, the year when I anticipate there will be a generation of tablet savvy users who will not sit patiently with a very linear, flip the pages type of newspaper app.
And, as my very rough sketches show here, it does not have to be a major production full of bells and whistles. All it would take would be a redrawing of the grid, more emphasis on larger photos (they have excellent photography), and, please please please: give our fingers something more to do than swipe.
From time to time there is a video clip, and, oh, how happy we all are to see Terry White perform That Woman is Me (Follies), or those fashion models come toward us strutting their stuff.
For the most, however, the Times’ app edition is a rather flat app, with the richest of content, which is the reason we come back day after day (nothing new here).
We are in the middle of 2012 already, New York Times. Time to get to your 2.0 app version pronto.
Until that happens, I guess I will have what you may call “print envy”, a feeling that I had never experienced, but that now I am too aware of.
Here is how NYT’s iPad app could look with minor changes
I have built the following sketches as a way of explaining what I mean when I say that the Times’ app could be more visual and less linear.
Here is how I would create a cleaner, more inviting environment on landing page
Opening of section would follow a similar grid, allowing for simple, easy navigation to rich content inside
Article reading page does not have to be a mass of uninviting text only
Here is a typical grid in the NYT’s app
Simple changes would make a difference: see the before and after of the same content treatment
The London Olympics and Gulf News’ 3D graphics
Gulf News graphics by Hugo A. Sanchez
It is a busy time for those infographic artists in newsrooms worldwide, with the opening of the London Olympics only five days away.
For Dubai’s Gulf News and the design team there. headed by Miguel Gomez, it is a sort of Olympics of their own as they prepare to launch their first graphics in 3D.
Miguel sends us here the first of the graphics to appear in the newspaper. The series of 3D graphics, Miguel tells me, is to introduce the various venues where the games will take place in the Olympic Park, leading to the main stadium, which will have its graphic published on the opening day of the Games.
Miguel is proud of the fact that all of the 3D graphics were done inhouse, the work of Hugo A. Sanchez.
“It is our first 3D project,” Miguel says.
Here is how Hugo A. Sanchez describes the work he has done on these 3D graphics for Gulf News:
At this moment I’m still working in the details of the last delivery, and I can say that this was a huge project and I’m proud of the results . I used all the 3D modeling, texturing and illumination techniques that I learned the past years and I had to improvise in certain stages due to the complex shapes of some of the venues as the Aquatics Centre or the Velodrome. I tried to make sure that the models and textures looked as close as possible to the real venue, because the purpose of these info graphics, is to show how each venue has been constructed, which kind of materials were used, the elements involved, the look of the interiors and the fully detailed images that you can achieve with the 3D modeling.
Hugo tells me that this project will have six parts and he has started publishing them already on his own website:
http://www.behance.net/robtiksabotage
Norway: an Aftenposten tribute
It has been a year since that horrific day when Anders Behring Breivik, a then 32-year-old Norwegian right-wing extremist, landed in the island of Utøya .and starting shooting his innocent, mostly young, victims.
Ronny Ruud, editorial manager of Aftenposten, Norway’s largest circulation newspaper, sends us what his newspaper has done to commemorate a date that Norwegians will never forget.
You see here the front page of July 22.
“On the day one year after the terror that struck Norway, killing 77 people, Norwegians gather to commemorate throughout the day.
On the front page we chose to mark the day with rose petals and the words “You will never be forgotten,” Ronny writes me.
“We also launched a free iPad app. You can find this in the App store- search for Aftenposten. In this free iPad app are journalist Kjetil Ostli’s and illustrator Arne Nost’s reflections through the ten-week trial against the terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, and some of the best pictures taken by photographers from Aftenposten during the year after the terror.“
Excellent work, Ronny, especially a front page that says so much in its elegance and simplicity.
In Colorado, USA: senseless killing strikes again
The Denver Post
The Globe and Mail
Germany’s Bild (Sunday edition), courtesy of Frank Deville
As we look at the pages of Aftenposten and the first year anniversary of that July 22 day that changed Norway, we have spent the weekend listening to the horrific accounts from witnesses and survivors of this latest tragedy, the massacre inside a movie house in Aurora, Colorado, during a midnight showing of the latest Batman movie.
Go here to see front pages in the aftermath:
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/181998/dark-night-front-pages-mourn-for-victims-of-colorado-theater-shooting/
Pages we like
Frank Deville, our Europe correspondent, sends this very graphic page from the Sunday Bild Zeitung, showing details of the Olympic stadium.
