It's not often you get to launch a NEW newspaper, but we did exactly that tonight.

The Potomac News and Manassas Journal Messenger combined on Sunday night to create a new newspaper — the News & Messenger, based in Prince William County, Va., about 25 miles south of Washington, DC.

MG partner Matt Mansfield spent the summer with Time Out Chicago. Mansfield worked closely with the magazine on its overall art direction, developing cover concepts and designing several special sections. The magazine also undertook several large-scale projects under Mansfield's direction, including a celebration of Windy City cultural icons timed to coincide with the brand's 40th anniversary. Mansfield and photographer Chris Strong collaborated on the many photo shoots (and one giant event, hosted at the CBS studios) that brought the 40 Chicago heroes together. That issue has just hit the streets in Chicago, so be sure to see it this week on newsstands. Check it out online, too.

Labels: art direction, Chicago, design, magazines

MG partner Matt Mansfield will be leading a magazine workshop in Thailand this September, along with Time Out Chicago managing editor Amy Carr. The base is Bangkok, but the aim is to work with all the global publishing houses that are setting up shop in Asia as competition there gets more and more fierce. The workshop runs Sept. 19-21 and will be produced under the direction of IFRA, which has more than 3,000 members in about 80 countries.

(Image from Lonely Planet)

MG partner Matt Mansfield, also a senior editor at the San Jose Mercury News, has begun an ambitious rethinking of the venerable Silicon Valley title. The base of the rethink is to use audience research to make some fast decisions about changes in the product portfolio, both in print and online.

Portfiolio recently profiled the effort, calling it "uniquely clear-eyed and transparent" in a piece by Sam Gustin.

"We all look at our slumping circulation and revenue numbers and wonder what kind of changes it will take to grow -- or even keep -- our audience," Mansfield said. "The good news is that we can find out. The answers lie in the people who walk, talk, drive, shop, and read among us every day."

The team is taking a very public approach to its reinvention, complete with a "Rethinking the Mercury News" blog, co-written by Mansfield and investigative reporter April Lynch, and a Facebook group. And as data rolls in from readers (and non-readers), it will be uploaded to a central database available to everyone in the organization, including business, circulation and production departments.

Stay tuned to see the rapid prototypes that come after the initial audience work.

MG partner Scott Goldman's home newspaper, The Indianapolis Star, will be busy in the coming two weeks as it ramps up for the Super Bowl now that the Colts are headed to Miami to face the Chicago Bears. The city certainly seems jazzed that Indy's team made it so far.

But we're more jazzed that Goldman will be pitting his design talents against Steve Cavendish at the Chicago Tribune, which will also certainly be rolling out all the stops for the Bears' first appearance at the Super Bowl after a 21-year drought. The last time the Bears made it, Mike Ditka was the coach and they had the bravado to record "The Super Bowl Shuffle" (which must be making its way out on YouTube about now)!

About that rivalry: Goldman is an assistant managing editor at the Star and Cavendish is graphics editor at the Trib, but these guys have history.

Turning on the way-back machine ourselves, we're thinking of when Goldman and Cavendish used to be Sports department colleagues at none other than The Washington Post, creating some of that paper's most-awarded pages. Watching their work, always a testament to elegance and the grace of the games they were covering, was a real treat. And that's why we're excited now.

To see these two visual journalism friends face off on such a big Midwest event, well, let's just say we won't all be watching Peyton Manning and Rex Grossman! And has anyone else noticed the similarity in championship bunting at both papers? Great minds, folks!

-Signed: Excited onlookers on the MG team

Check out the good folks at www.foureyedmonsters.com and see how these two filmmakers are great collaborators. There's a good feed of video podcasting on their site where they explore visual language, the nature of storytelling and all sorts of instructive stuff for anyone who seeks to make better narrative.

And if their film has not come to your city, go request it!

MG Redesign has launched its fourth redesign of the year, this time of the St. Tammany News, a thrice-weekly newspaper serving a wide area just north of New Orleans. The community was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina a little more than a year ago, and the disaster forced the hasty merger of two Wick Communications papers into one combined edition — the St. Tammany News.

Since then, the papers have dealt with circulation issues,
the combining of former editorial staffs, cutting down to a 48-inch web width and refining their newly-directed efforts. This redesign, headed by MG partner Scott Goldman with consultant Bill Gaspard, DME of the Las Vegas Sun (making his debut on the MG staff), was the next piece of the puzzle for St. Tammany.


The new look, featuring Hoefler typefaces Gotham and Mercury, standardized many styles that were improvised upon the rapid creation of the paper. It also greatly improved the legibility of all type — from bylines to display headlines.

General manager Sandy Cunningham and production manager Chad Hebert were the driving forces on the design implementation in St. Tammany, with Hebert driving the keyboard and mouse for the first redesign edition, which hit newsstands Sunday.

As I walked into Pierre’s small airport waiting area, waiting to board my flight back to Indy, I discovered just how tightly-knit a city Pierre is.

A very nice woman asked, “You’re the guy who redesigned the Capital Journal, aren’t you?”

Who, me? Well, yeah, that was me …

“I gotta tell you, that’s a great-looking job you all did. It looks wonderful. It looks like a real newspaper now,” she said, after explaining to me that her husband works in the pressroom and she’d seen me at the paper the day before.

The man next to her piped up: “I love the new size! What a difference in the paper.”

Two or three more people down the row started looking at us all and nodding. And thus began our one and only reader survey of the redesign (hey, it’s a 5,000-circulation daily!).

Every city should have readers like Pierre does. These people feel connected to their paper, a formerly-family owned, afternoon paper that hadn’t redesigned in … well, a VERY long time. These readers had patiently waited for the changes to start coming, and they actually looked forward to the redesign.

Usually we fear launch day in redesigns, for readers are usually reluctant to change their habits. But in Pierre, it was stunningly unanimous. The readers ate up the new look, and they want more. Now. But they’ll have to be slightly patient — it’s two months until the CJ switches to an AM publication.

But when that happens, it looks like the hometown paper in Pierre will be the one everyone is reading every morning. MG Redesign was very proud to play a part in reconnecting this paper to its readers.

—Scott Goldman

Welcome back to the MG blog! Sorry we've been away for so long.

We have liftoff! The Capital Journal debuted its new size and new look Monday afternoon in Pierre, SD, to solid reviews from a readership eager for an updated look. In an area that's very devoted to its newspaper and its traditions, publisher Russ Cannon reported three phone calls last night and several more this morning — and they were were all positive! Several area leaders saw the new paper yesterday and gave it big thumbs-up. (Nice thing about a smaller town — instant feedback!)

The CJ took a substantial trimming, going from a 52-inch web to a 48-inch in one slice. The newspaper basically looked like it spent the weekend on the South Beach Diet. The paper also debuted a second section each day, headed by its popular People page, now in living color!

Kudos to the newsroom staff for making this happen, especially Ken Potter, who stepped in to the news editing role on a temporary basis about 6 weeks ago. Ken made this redesign come to life, which wasn't easy considering he was working without 17 percent of the newsroom staff!

MG Redesign made its initial visit this week to another Wick Communications paper, the Capital Journal in Pierre, South Dakota. MG partner Scott Goldman went to the Great White North (actually, it wasn't that white!) and began the redesign process with the staff of the Capital Journal. Launch is tentatively set for mid-April and is just one of many major changes taking place in the next few months at the paper — including moving to an AM cycle from PM, adding a second section with color every day, and in August, launching a 6th day of publication (still not certain if it's going to be Saturday or Sunday). At left is the beautiful state capital in Pierre. Stay tuned for looks at the CJ redesign as it progresses.