A few weeks ago Phil made Today's Guardian.
Completely unofficial but made with the Guardian's Open Platform it shows all the articles from today’s issue of the Guardian one 'page' at a time, like the physical newspaper. It does nothing else, just that. As Phil says, "Hopefully it’s as easy to browse through today’s newspaper as it would be with the print edition." (Read more about it here.)
I thought it would be interesting to compare a day's newspaper with Phil's site. Purely a visual comparison. And a glanceable visual comparison at that. What does it feel like to flick through both things? Let's have a look.
What do we learn from that?
The thing that strikes me the most are the ads. You really see what a large portion of the newspaper they are. I miss them on Phil's site. I miss the big splashes of colour. That's an odd thing to say. Phil's site does carry ads served by The Guardian, but they are banner ads and the like. And obviously I am advertising-friendly, but they seem to give the paper a sort of rhythm that's missing from the site. Which reminds me of a time a few years ago when a newspaper designer told me it was sometimes easier to design a page with ads on as it gave you somewhere to begin. It took away the blank canvas fear of an empty page.
I doubt if anyone else misses them though.
Just to look at the video, I miss the ads and large images and would prefer the physical paper over the online paper every time. The only advantages that online has are speed and delivery, which are major…
Posted by: Justin | Jun 27, 2010 at 19:17
I do. (Miss them.)
Wouldn't have thought so, but I do. You're right, it's the colour. Nothing to do with the fact they're ads, I don't think - the photos do the same thing, loosening up the pages and giving you something to latch onto visually.
Posted by: Mike Reed | Jun 29, 2010 at 17:59