The Trends.

From the results of the 10th European Newspaper Award the following trends can be deduced:

Overall Situation. On the whole, European newspapers are hit by falling sales as could be seen from the data included in in the registration forms.
The reasons for this are
- free newspapers, which, in the meantime, are being issued in most European countries.
- the growing importance of the Internet as an additional channel of  information for the latest news.
- the increase in the percentage of elderly people, which, in the long run, leads to a shortage of young subscribers.

Quality. How do the newspapers respond to this development? Editorial staffs still rely on the quality of design and concept. In comparison to previous years, the use of photographs and photographic cuts has been improved, and there is a trend towards longer articles and service boxes. This year, there were more submissions in the category 'concept' and, accordingly, more award winners in this category. So far, editors have not decided to economize or produce low quality, which would, eventually, result in a lower number of award winners.

Value. The chief award winners prefer light serif typefaces. German regional newspapers, however, favour traditional typefaces such as the classicist Antiqua, which is a font typical of business papers. Respectability and good quality still rank high with editorial staffs. In Scandinavia, sanserif typefaces are gaining ground, especially the Tazzer, which was originally designed for "Tageszeitung" from Berlin.

Continuity. Instead of spectacular relaunches, which are not likely to attract more readers, but might rather scare off the regulars, quite a number of newspapers prefer continuous improvement of layout and contents. After all, newspapers are branded products with a specific image developed over decades. So, it is only natural that any changes are dealt with utmost care.

Magazine-like Design. Characteristic features of magazines, such as cut-out pictures and lots of white space, have made their way into newspapers for quite a while now.

Magazines. More and more newspapers add glossy supplements to their regular product, which need not be afraid of comparisons with illustrated magazines. Examples are "Algemeen Dagblad" (Netherlands), "NZZ am Sonntag" (Switzerland), "Die Zeit"(Germany) and "WirtschaftsBlatt" (Austria).

So far nine yearbooks focusing on the concept and design of European newspapers have been published. Volumes 8 and 9 are available as PDF documents on CD-ROM.

Orders can be made via
www.newspaperaward.org.

The newspaper as a creative medium. Magazine-like newspapers are still trendsetters with European newspapers. Even front pages are able to impress with their gripping presentations of topical news. So, in sum, it can be said that newspapers are a creative medium which still attracts numerous readers, despite of the Internet and other electronic media, because of their polished concepts of content and design.

Newspaper Design 9
ca. 650 pictures
ISBN 978-3-00-024497-1
€ 35

The author