There had been rumblings of a pending redesign of the Star Tribune newspaper for a while. They've been making some incremental changes lately — adding a statewide columnist, folding the Metro section into the main news section, dropping the separate Science and Homes sections on Sunday — that signaled the new publisher's direction. I had also just heard a few days ago that the various suburban area desks were being combined into a single suburban desk, which didn't make a lot of sense to me, in terms of guaranteeing the reporters' depth of subject knowledge in any particular part of the metro area, considering there are dozens and dozens of suburbs sprawling every which way around the two cities.
So a new look on today's pages was not that big a surprise. That they renamed the paper the Minnesota Star Tribune was a bit eyebrow raising, I admit:
The Minneapolis paper of record has been uncomfortable with its city name since the late 1980s, when it declared itself Star Tribune – Newspaper of the Twin Cities. I'm not sure how long that moniker lasted. Everyone made fun of it at the time. As far as I know, people have been referring to it as the Minneapolis Star Tribune for quite some time, though I'm not sure that was its official name. As you can see, the word Minneapolis was not in the nameplate in use through yesterday:
Aside from changing the name itself, the new logo is a big departure. Here's a history of the logo they included with today's paper, starting from the two different papers that merged to become the Star Tribune:
The one shown fourth from the bottom was what they were using when I moved here in 1986, but it was soon replaced by the third from the bottom. That stayed for quite a while. The version they have just replaced, which was a refinement of the previous one, was — in my opinion — the best one. It was the least gimmicky, with the best graphic weight. (I never liked those overlapping letters.)
The new logo, unfortunately, is not nearly as strong. The name itself is too long, so the letters are too small and too condensed. (Despite the fact that I love a condensed sans serif!) If they had omitted the "The," it could have been larger, at least. To me, it looks weak and generic, and as if a timid designer did it. The angular cuts and narrowed strokes that were added to a pedestrian font — which their write-up claims make it distinctive and "add uniqueness" — are an already-tired motif in the type-design world.
I don't mind the change from a five-pointed star to a four-pointed star, but I do roll my eyes at their explanation of the reasoning. Four points instead of five, they say, symbolize their symmetrical (yet nuanced!) approach to reporting... and the way they will reach all four corners of Minnesota. The "upward cutout" in the star "represents their direction forward" (okay, it looks like a path) and also somehow "carries through the equity of the previous logomark." Whatever, blah blah blah.
They had someone put together a very puffy piece of copy to fill the inside cover of the wrapper that surrounded today's issue:
It would have been better if it were two-thirds or even half as long. I feel kind of bad for the people who had to work on it. And by "people," I mean the committee who wrote it, since that's who it sounds like was the author.
Then there's the tag line: "The Heart and Voice of the North." Can they take themselves any more seriously, at the same time that they've finally admitted to their long-time nickname (the Strib)? And commissioned an illustration of a gray duck as a mascot?
Speaking of the mascot illustration, created by talented and highly regarded illustrator Kevin Cannon... I think it needs some tweaking, at least on newsprint:
Stribby may be a gray duck, sure, but does that mean there can't be more green and white on the clothes? Does the bill have to be black? The definition disappears, at least when the duck appears face on:
It's less of a problem when the duck is seen in profile and also I imagine generally when shown online, since there's better contrast there, but I think there needs to be some rethinking on the color scheme. White shirt, green stars, black stripes, maybe? And lighter gray feathers.
And the bill just cannot be black.
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