whileyouwereout:

shelbot:

roads2roam:

thedailywhat:

Warning Labels of the Day: Bewildered by the British government’s insistence on slapping warning labels on “any content that involves sex, violence or strong language” but not on sloppy journalism or specious arguments, Geek comedian Tom Scott decided to proactively create a newspaper warning label set himself, and has been spending his days putting them on free papers he finds on the London Underground.

If you want to make your own, Tom has helpfully provided a PDF template for Avery’s Letter-size 5160 labels or equivalent. (A4 13 x 5 sheet template also available.)

[notcot.]

This is so good!!!!

ninakix:

Australia has one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world and in order to raise awareness about the disease, Victoria’s Cancer Council used newspaper’s ‘grab marks’ (used in the printing process to hold the paper to the machines) as a creative vehicle to remind people about getting their moles checked. The charity printed onto the grab marks to make them look like a mole.

These ‘grab marks’ feel raised where the paper has been punctured and are positioned in the margins of the newspaper. The message read, “If your mole starts to feel like this, see a doctor”, along with: “If a flat mole becomes raised, get it checked.” This reminded the public to get their moles checked each time they flicked the page.

via

dailymeh:

Phil Gyford wanted an online newspaper that had less friction, more readability and what he calls “finishability”:

Finally, I wanted finishability. I wanted to be able to read today’s news, know I’d read it all, and that I’m done until tomorrow. Again, this is not too difficult if you’re willing to accept that the contents of the print newspaper is a reasonable solution.

So he built Today’s Guardian. I really like it: simple, clutter-free, easy to read, and it doesn’t assume the reader is stupid. It makes things simpler by taking away choice: at every article, you can basically go forward or backwards, and that’s it, like flipping pages in a real newspaper. And it works, too. I’m ok with fewer choices when it makes things easier and it’s only one of several ways to get things done. You can still read the Guardian in paper form or on their own cluttered website.

I can see this kind of navigation working great for online magazines and other websites that generally carry longer texts. Stick a small “table of contents” link in the footer or header and you should be golden. I’d try it on this blog, except I think it would be annoying with short texts, and I do tend to be all over the place wrt. post length. One problem I see is permanent links (in Today’s Guardian, there are no permalinks), but I’m sure there’s a solution to that somewhere. (found here)

catbird:

That’s one page of the Huffington Post.

What’s the takeaway here? That the way to “win” isn’t about thoughtfully designed, clear, simple, intuitive interfaces and experiences. It’s about throwing every single piece of crap you can find onto the screen all at once and then crosslinking the hell out of it until your servers bleed.

BTW, the Huffington Post has about 12.5 million unique visitors per month now, and is likely to easily overtake the New York Times in just a few more years.

danmeth:

Sketchbook exercise #63763

Mess around with newspapers.
They’ll be gone soon and then you’ll realize how amazing they were.

squashed:

In late October, Newsday, the Long Island daily that the Dolans bought for $650 million, put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in media circles it has been followed with interest. Could its fate be a sign of what others, including The New York Times, might expect? So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com? The answer: 35 people. As in fewer than three dozen. As in a decent-sized elementary-school class.