#1 – Regardless Redesign
Since the International Herald Tribune – one of the newspaper world’s most historic titles – was completely owned by the New York Times Company, in 2003, a host of changes has been implemented due to the commercial challenges and the financial toughness of the twenty-first century. Mainly in order to boost online advertising revenue as both profits and circulation tumble, the paper’s website, iht.com, has been shut down and now redirects to a new portal on the New York Times’s website, nytimes.com. Non-U.S. internet viewers are automatically sent to the new portal – global.nytimes.com.
In July 2008 stakeholders decided to dump the IHT unique 142-year-old nameplate “logo”, or “dingbat” for the typography affectionate, which made its first appearance in the New York Tribune on April 10, 1866. The Paris-based newspaper’s executive editor, Michael Oreskes, alleged that “dropping the dingbat would make the front page cleaner, more modern, more streamlined”. Meanwhile, Vanessa Whittall, the Herald Tribune’s communications manager explained that “by removing the traditional ‘dingbat’ graphic between Herald and Tribune they have created a more contemporary and concise presentation that is consistent with their digital plataforms”.
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The IHT’s new nameplate drops “INTERNATIONAL” from where “NEW YORK” used to sit above the “Herald-Tribune” name and moves it into the main gothic text of the nameplate itself. According to the north-american intellectual, Andrew Cusack, “the result is an overly long banner with a crowded feeling which the designers have apparently (and unsuccessfully) attempted to compensate for with an unbalanced excess of white space above the name”.
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Richard Kluger in “The Paper: The Life and Death of The New York Herald Tribune”, described the dingbat:
“in the middle of the crudely drawn tableau is a clock reading twelve minutes past six – no one knows why (conceivably it was the moment of Horace Greeley’s birth); to the left, Father Time sits in brooding contemplation of antiquity, represented by the ruin of a Greek temple, a man and his ox plowing, a caravan of six camels passing before two pyramids, and an hourglass; to the right, a sort of Americanized Joan of Arc, arms outstretched beneath a backwards-billowing Old Glory, welcomes modernity in the form of a chugging railroad train, factories with smoking chimneys, an updated plow, and an industrial cogwheel (over which the incautious heroine is about to trip); atop the clock, ready to take off into the boundless American future, is an eagle – all for no extra cost.”
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Mr. Kluger continues, stating that the symbol “was a baroque snapshot of time arrested, an allegorical hieroglyph of the newspaper’s function to render history on the run”. Media commentator, Juan Antionio Giner, asserted it was “not a smart strategic decision for a dying newspaper” and compared the decision to “play with such a traditional, magnificent, beautiful, well-done logo” to “moving the chairs on a sinking Titanic”. Send us your impressions.
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History
Founded by James Gordon Bennett, Jr. as the European edition of the New York Herald, in 1887, the Paris Herold, formerly based in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, survived to several sellings and acquisitions through the years. After the death of Bennett, Jr. in 1918, both Herald editions were bought by Frank Andrew Munsey, who afterwards sold them in 1924 to the New York Tribune, originating then, the Paris Herald Tribune and the New York Herald Tribune, which, in 1959, were acquired by John Hay Whitney, a businessman and United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom. The Paris edition was kept alive by the Whitney family even after the New York paper foundered in 1966. The Washington Post purchased a half-ownership in December of that year and the Whitney’s sold their half to the New York Times in May 1967, whereupon the newspaper became known as the International Herald Tribune.
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13 votes
