Before and After: The Press Extra Logo

Before

After

In the newspaper industry, one effort commonly employed to draw new readership in is to publish what is called a TMC, or Total Market Coverage supplement. It is a condensed version of the full-sized paper, with smaller articles of local news, usually only a few pages long. Copies are distributed free of charge to households of non-subscribers. It also, of course, serves as an advertising vehicle.

The Press-Republican's TMC publication, Press Republican Extra (called simply the "Press Extra" in-house), goes out to approximately 20,000 homes in our coverage area every Wednesday. The decision was recently made (more or less, I'm a few months tardy in posting this) to redesign the flag from its previous incarnation. The objective was to condense the current version so that an additional a low-cost, full-color advertising opportunity could be presented in the form of a triangular "dog ear" ad in the right-hand corner of the front page.

The project had a short turnaround time, so I acted quickly in assessing what needed to be lost or kept and began slashing away; the tagline was the first thing to go, and Cooper was replaced by a bold version of the much cleaner Bodoni. For the bottom field, a slightly lighter shade of the blue from our online identity was used. The result is a visually concise, distinguished logo.

Project Profile: The Obama Centerfold

Over the 18 months prior to the 2008 Presidential election being decided , a chapter in American history played out that brought out both the best and worst of humanity. On the left, some of the country's most trusted and supposedly impartial media outlets were exposed as showing an imbalance of favorable coverage to Barack Obama (it became so obvious even SNL got in on it). Meanwhile, the GOP made much hay out of the now-president's middle name, used a lapel pin as a barometer for his patriotism, and, most embarrassingly, questioned the validity of his American citizenship.

Eventually, America elected her first black President in Barack Obama. For a brief, shining moment, the politics of politics seemed to be laid aside. The polls were closed. The ballots were counted. All that remained was to swear the guy in. You felt an inexplicable buzz about the world around you. You spoke excitedly with co-workers, even if you'd never been much for politics before in your entire life. For the first time in a long time, people all over the country lined up to buy several copies of the next day's newspaper. At the offices of the Press, preparation for the special Inauguration Day issue were already underway. The task of creating a pull-out centerfold poster fell to me, likely due to my oft-overheard, heated-but-civil discussions with a staff photographer who was a democrat.

After much deliberation and hand-wringing, of wanting to get it just right, I finally decided that the moment itself was the best treatment. An AP wire photo of Obama waving at the crowd after his iconic Grant Park speech, with a suitable excerpt about America being a place were all things are possible. The design was all about letting history simply speak for itself, and needed only to be paired with the right treatment of type; Trajan Pro Bold for the name, Adobe Caslon Pro Semibold for the byline and callout. The Red and Blue in the President's name were taken from exact CMYK values for the colors in the American flag.

Alas, the original vision as seen here was not what eventually made its way onto the presses, issues with oversaturation of black arose. A less effective compromise was settled upon, (executed by a different staff designer) with the night sky in the background gradiating into a cloudy gray and then back to normal again to alleviate the amount of black color information.