API Redesign Services

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Has your content outpaced your look?

Do you feel like you are trapped in the '70s?

Consider API's special services in redesign We can help you:

• Understand your market and build a mission statement
• Organize your staff to undertake a redesign
• Make the best choices in typography and graphics
• Write a stylebook
• Build a prototype to test reader response
• Launch your new look
• - and follow up

Is newspaper design still important?

Absolutely! With increasing convergence in the media, newspaper design has actually grown in importance. Readers, our customers, have become increasingly visual in their demands for presentation. Good design, coupled with relevant, informative content, provides a winning combination for newspapers in today's competitive marketplace.

Are we talking "pretty pages"?

Just the opposite. Pretty newspaper pages are often just that, attractive, but less than informative. Pages of what one designer in the '80s called "eye candy." What is important is the value of the news and a process of design that allows the reader to get information, quickly understand that information, and move on.

What constitutes good design?

The best design is unobtrusive. It should be attractive, logical and organized, and support the priority of the news and features in the information package. Design elements and techniques should be functional. They should further the communication of information to the reader; they should guide the reader through a page or section and they should be visually pleasing, not overwhelming, to the reader.

There is a great difference between LAYOUT and DESIGN. Layout is the process of filling space with the material available. Design is prioritizing the material, supporting it with graphic elements, and using a logical trail to guide the reader through a page and the product. Simply put, good design is good visual communication. API can help you make it happen.

How can you (we) get there?

Through the American Press Institute's Tailored Programming Division. This division of API offers design projects tailored to the specific needs of your newspaper.

Using the services of noted designers Warren Watson and Phil Nesbitt, API has undertaken a number of design and design-related projects with great success. Recent projects include working with the staff of The Oklahoman to complete and launch a redesign of that newspaper, while completing management and leadership training for the entire news and business-side staffs of the 289,605-circulation newspaper. We have completed a two-year, top-to-bottom design and management project in Mexico City for El Universal, Mexico's largest newspaper, and design-related projects with Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. and Freedom Newspapers.

If you are looking for a design or design/management project, or aren¹t sure exactly what you need, contact Steve Buttry, API's director of tailored programming, and let us offer some suggestions.

About API

The American Press Institute is an independent, not-for-profit center devoted solely to leadership and management development activities for newspaper professionals and journalism educators. Founded in 1946 by the journalism industry as its training and development arm, API has served more than 35,000 seminar members.