Charles Apple | American Copy Editors Society

Riah Lawry, managing editor of the Collegian — the student paper at tiny 1,613-student Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky — writes this weekend:

I realize many newspapers go through redesigns, but I never realized how difficult it would be until we attempted and completed a redesign this past week.

Well, I wouldn’t say it’s complete. Design is never complete; it just progresses.

Whoop; hang on right there. I know a lot of professional editors who don’t seem to understand that. So let’s repeat that, shall we?

Design is never complete; it just progresses.

Very good, Riah!

But notice what Riah says she and her colleagues did. They redesigned their student paper. In one week.

Here’s a before-and-after of the design. On the left is an issue from last October. On the right is this week’s edition.

Wow! That’s quite a change!

Riah writes:

I definitely wasn’t the one doing the most work on the redesign, either. Four of us returned to Asbury a week early on August 15 to redesign The Asbury Collegian: Erika Graham, Jane Brannen, Anna Leon and I.

Here’s the redesign team. Left: Erika, the layout editor. Right: Jane, the graphics editor.

Left: Anna, the executive editor. Right: Riah, the managing editor.

Riah continues:

During that week, Jane Brannen and Erika Graham (our graphics editor and layout editor) completely redesigned our newspaper and this past week we integrated our new look, taking the newspaper from broadsheet. I was blown away by how much work this took!

Production night this past Tuesday was crazy. Erika, Anna and I didn’t leave until 4:30 a.m.! The next morning Erika was back up at the Collegian office at 9:00 a.m.trying to work out the problems we encountered the night before. The end result was worth it, though!

When we first discussed the redesign with friends, I remember students looking at me oddly when I mentioned tabloids. There is an ingrained perspective that tabloids are cheap and provide cheap content, but I hope this first issue has put all those doubts to rest.

Riah is absolutely correct, of course. As professional broadsheet newspapers continue to cut back on newsprint, we’ll eventually reach a point where we’ll either print pages so tall and thin to be laughable. Or we’ll finally go tabloid. The “ingrained perspective” Riah mentions is the only reason, I believe, why so many professional papers are still broadsheets.

One way to overcome this preconceived notion, however, is with quality. Which is precisely what the Collegian staff has done here. Yes, the the paper is tabloid. But it’s clearly nothing but quality — good stories, well-presented. Even the typography, use of color and white space looks like what you’d see in a high-class magazine.

Here’s a closer look at the new front:

Riah continues:

Our content is not lacking because we have changed our design. On the contrary, I feel like the new design has encouraged student writers to think beyond the four walls of a typical story; it stretches them to think of what else they can include in the story package. When students go further in their research, our design expands with info boxes and graphics. As a result, students are drawn into the stories and are more likely to spend longer periods of time with the new newspaper.

With that in mind, let’s look through the insides of the launch edition of the new-and-improved Collegian. Click on any of these pages for a slightly larger view.

Page two shows off the tabloid’s magazine roots. Page three shows what you can do with a nice, simple crop on a tabloid page.

Designing tab pages can go a lot quicker, once you get into the groove. The pages are smaller, which forces you to make fewer choices. Armed with smart, simple tools, you can breeze right along.

Pages four and five seem like more conventional-type news pages.

I love that dramatic horizontal crop on the editorial page, page six.

Note the nice vertical crops on the single shots on page seven. And the way the designer grouped them together with a black box.

Pages eight and nine make up the center spread and natural color positions. There’s a wonderful variety of sizes and shapes here. And again, the use of type is immaculate.

In case you’re wondering, Riah writes:

Headlines and the folio are Steelfish; the body is Arno Pro; and the subheads are Museo.

We may introduce more weights as the semester progresses. For now, we’re still testing out these fonts and we’ll see if we need more flexibility.

Pages 10 and 11 are a nice sports feature. Note how the designer keeps the story on page 10, uses an interesting horizontal crop there and then saves page 11 for a full-page picture.

Again, you can just imagine the students leafing though this issue at lunch and watching their little brains exploding. The students at Asbury University no longer have a college newspaper. They have a weekly tabloid news magazine.

Pages 12 and 13 continue the sports and features sections. Note the collection of big-number factoids at the bottom of page 12. Note the parallel vertical crops on page 13.

Pages 14 and 15 are features pages. Page 15 — a food feature — is quite nice. However, you can see right away that page 14 suffers from a lack of art.

That’s one of the big problems with changing to a tabloid: Everyone has to write shorter and editors have to learn how to edit more sharply. If you don’t, then you wind up with postage-stamp-sized photos. Or no pictures at all.

Page 16 is a full-page sports action shot. And a gorgeous way it is to close out this week’s edition.

Riah writes:

All this to say, I’m incredibly proud of The Asbury Collegian staff and all the hard work it took to make this redesign happen.

This has been my pet project for the past two weeks and it looks to be gaining popularity on campus!

In addition to sending us these pages, Riah also blogged about the redesign this weekend. Find that here.

The Collegian also redesigned its web site to match its new print look.

Find that web site here.

Find Riah’s Twitter feed here.