Cinema On Fire

Copiamos íntegro el último post del blog de Vostok, escrito por Javier Cañada. ¿Por qué? Porque tiene que ver directamente con algo en lo que estamos trabajando y de lo que os contaremos en un par de meses.

Mientras tanto…

Los Angeles Times reports that Rupert Murdoch plans on launching a newspaper for the iPad and the like only. Freshly designed. Both content and form from scratch.

I’d sell my soul to Lucifer to be on that team.

In some of my recent talks I’ve mentioned the story behind USA Today. I think it’s one of the best examples to learn about information consumption and adaptation.

USA Today launched almost 30 years ago built on a premise: that most Americans didn’t read, that they mostly got news from television (color television) and that they spent a lot of time in front of the tube.

Al Neuharth, USA Today’s founder, understood the new context and decided to design a newspaper from scratch, one based on these premises where:

• there was color all over (for pictures, for sections) just like on TV
• photos drove the stories and not the opposite
• articles were short
• news didn’t need a follow-up, there was no incremental coverage

This was the result, the fresh design of the USA Today in 1982:

And here is what the New York Times looked like in the early 80′s (see how big the change was?):

In short, USA Today wasn’t targeted to newspaper readers but to TV watchers. The critics called it the McPaper, the junk news, the fast food of information. But despite that they ended up being the most read paper in the USA. They understood their new readers and the new context. They won.

And that is why most old newspapers redesign for the internet or for the ipad and they fail miserably. Why? They don’t pay attention to new users and their new contexts of use.