How come Mario Garcia didn’t redesign this one?

Vijaya Karnataka, the largest selling Kannada newspaper owned by The Times of India group and edited by Visweshwar Bhat, has undergone a redesign.

Above is the front page of the first edition of the relaunched issue; below is yesterday’s front page.

This is the second revamp of the paper after ToI acquired the Bangalore-based paper four years ago, and the double-deck masthead comes just months after the City’s oldest newspaper, Deccan Herald, went for a similar double-deck masthead.

A wider column-width in the new design allows for wider front page pointer ads on column one, always a useful weapon in the hands of ToI’s very efficient response team.

Visit the epaper: Vijaya Karnataka epaper

Also read: Good heavens, yet another Mario Garcia redesign

Yet another paper redesigned by Mario Garcia

Finally, a redesign not done by Mario Garcia

Except that the cartoonist is in multicolour

An exhibition of cartoons by Balraj K.N., in Bangalore, from October 31 to November 14. Daily from 10 am to 6 pm. Venue: Indian Cartoon Gallery, No. 1, Midford House, Midford Garden, off M.G. Road.

Selling the soul? Or sustaining the business?

PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: Let it be said upfront: Indian newspapers have sold their front pages to advertisers before, and The Times of India is not the first.

In 1948, India’s self-proclaimed “national newspaper”, The Hindu, reported the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on its back page, because, back then, the “Mount Road Mahavishnu” used to run ads on the front page.

In the mid-1990s, when the “Old Lady of Boribunder” ran ear panel advertisements on either side of its title, it sold both slots to a (chocolate?) advertiser who created the words “LET” and “WAIT” in the same font as the paper’s mashtead.

Result, when readers received the paper, the masthead that greeted them was “LET THE TIMES OF INDIA WAIT”.

More recently, using the front page for advertising, often by flanking the actual front page with a wraparound, has gained currency among a variety of advertisers and newspapers, including The Hindu.

And there are those who believe this is a good thing because the most important piece of real estate in a paper can draw top dollar, which can sustain newsrooms in a tight advertising market. After all, the New York Times has just started taking front page ads.

Selling the front page for advertising is one thing, but selling a newspaper’s masthead?

That’s precisely what the Delhi edition of The Times of India has done today (see image, above).

The Times often uses the masthead to create Google-style doodles, to wish readers on festivals and to create a splash  on important news days. For journalists and readers of the old school, even that may not be OK, but at least that doesn’t amount to signalling to the world that the soul of the paper is safe.

But in a step that suggests that there is nothing in the paper that cannot be bought for a price, The Times today sells its masthead to a mobile phone company, whose ad, with various arms of it creeping all over the news space, appears below on the bottom-half of the front page.

It can be argued that there is nothing wrong with monetising the masthead. Regular readers rarely look at it with a close eye and in the case of the The Times of India, readers who are used to their paper’s masthead being played around with, may not even notice.

On the other hand, sure, business is bad, but this bad?

Also read: Pyramid Saimira, Tatva & Times Private Treaties

Times Private Treaties gets a very public airing

SUCHETA DALAL: Forget the news, you can’t believe the ads either

SALIL TRIPATHI: The first casualty of a cosy deal is credibility

PAUL BECKETT: Indian media holding Indian democracy ransom

PRATAP BHANU MEHTA: ‘Indian media in deeply murky ethical territory’

The scoreline: Different strokes for different folks

Does he who pays the piper call the tune?

Good heavens, yet another Mario Garcia redesign

In a nation of a billion (plus a few hundred million) people, in the outsourcing capital of the world, Indian publishers continue to face enormous trouble in finding a designer with a pulse on local tastes to redesign their products.

And the only name on the speeddial of otherwise extremely stingy proprietors—be it in the north or south of India, be it in English or the languages, be it newspapers or magazines—is Mario Garcia™.

After having redesigned every print publication in The Hindu group over the last few years (The Hindu, Business Line, Sportstar, Frontline); after having redesigned Hindustan Times; after having redesigned Sakaal Times; after having redesigned The Week; after having designed Sakshi—and heaven knows what else in this wide and wonderful country—Mario Garcia Jr has redesigned the website of The Hindu.

Above is the beta version of the new page, below is the old version.

Future contestants of Mastermind might like to consider “Indian Newspaper Design” for their specialist round. The answer for all 10 questions is Mario Garcia.

Also read: Yet another paper redesigned by Mario Garcia

Finally, a redesign not done by Mario Garcia

Is economic downturn the best time for redesign?

It’s the season for the redesign of websites. In just the last three weeks, Rediff.com, The Times of India and Hindustan Times have gone in for a overhaul of their home pages.

Outlook*, the weekly newsmagazine published from Delhi, has just joined the pack. Above is the new home page created by editor Sundeep Dougal and his team*; below is the old one.

Gone is the old, uneven, cluttered four-column grid with ads spilling out of smaller screens. In its place is a more modular, customisable homepage with clear demarcations of categories, and lots of white space.

* Disclosures apply

Less is better for the new, redesigned rediff.com

India’s pioneering news, views and e-commerce portal, rediff.com, has unveiled a brand-new, minimalist home page that is a far removed from its earlier “busy” homepage (screenshot below), and is almost a replica of the beta version of its world homepage.

The NASDAQ-listed site, founded in 1996 by adman and entrepreneur Ajit Balakrishnan, is edited by Nikhil Lakshman, the former editor of The Sunday Observer, The Indian Post, Mid-Day and Sunday Mid-Day, and a top editor at The Illustrated Weekly of India.

Rediff also publishes the New York weekly newspaper, India Abroad.

Also read: ‘Indian journalists take themselves too seriously’

Yet another paper redesigned by Mario Garcia

India’s second-largest English language daily newspaper, the 85-year-old Hindustan Times, has a new look from today, with new fonts, new layouts and a new masthead.

The new design, by Mario Garcia, is “benchmarked to the best international standards”, writes editor-in-chief Sanjoy Narayan in his introductory note.

“You’re holding the future in your hands,” Narayan writes.

A wraparound flanking the new paper carries a full-page advertisement for the new paper.

“It’s time newspapers stopped being confusing and boring. Stopped talking about things that don’t matter.

“It is time newspapers started highlighting real issues. Started making better sense of the world for me.

“It is time newspapers reflected the changing times. Got me excited. Got me engaged. Got me hooked.

“It is time.”

Garcia’s design supplants the one created by Michael Keegan, the Washington Post designer, who did two separate redesigns for the main paper over the last 10 years, writes former editor Vir Sanghvi, now the paper’s advisory editorial director.

Also read: Finally, a redesign not done by Mario Garcia

A cartoon for every journo-blogger’s dashboard

Courtesy: David Horsey of Tribune Media Services

Link via The Week

Lifetime awards for a lifetime of funny lines

Seven veteran Indian cartoonists were honoured with lifetime achievement awards by the Indian Institute of Cartoonists in Bangalore on Monday.

In the front row are the cartoonists (from left): E.P. Unny (The Indian Express), Vasant Sarvate (Lalit), Madhan (Ananda Vikatan and Junior Vikatan), Kaak (Hindustan), Thomas alias Toms (Malayala Manorama), Prabhakar Raobail and T. Venkat Rao.

Photograph: Karnataka Photo News

5 photography tips from ace lensman Raghu Rai

Master-photographer Raghu Rai, who was nominated by Henri Cartier-Bresson to join Magnum, in conversation with ASRP Mukesh in The Pioneer, on his entry into photography and what it takes to be a good lensman:

# “Skills are never taught, they are acquired. I can give you a camera, but can’t feed your vision.”

# “Photography is a strguggle to respond to the situation and realise its importance. Death and life don’t wait for anyone. One has to understand this hidden meaning before picking up a camera.”

# “Non-professional photographers should begin clicking portraints as it teaches them to connect with emotions better than juggling between doing overambitious pictures.”

# “If your mind is not connected to what you are shooting then you are not a good photographer.”

# “A creative photographer is one who either captures mystery or reveals things, everything else is useless.”

Photograph: courtesy Magnum

Also read: Raghu Rai’s Magnum photo gallery

T.S. Satyan on photography

Prashant Panjiar on photography

T.S. Nagarajan on photography