The Boston Globe Calendar Section Redesign
New On Disc Page Redesign
Prior to the redesign, this page was titled "Recordings," but the name felt old; it conveyed no urgency. Were the reviews from this year? last year? Why should a reader read this?
The old design had built into its standard format a headline going across the top of all the reviews. The problem was you could never tell which review the headline was supposed to go with. The headline seemed to be an unnecessary and confusing element, but because it was part of the standard format, it was inserted there each week.
The typography for the CD title and musical artist was especially clunky, unattractive and hard-to-read, particularly when the name of the recording was long.
The multiple bold dropcaps (numbering as many as seven) often formed words when taken together and added a fussiness to the design.
The body text in the CD pick column was set in Franklin Bold Condensed and was difficult to read at the full column length that it ran.
The CD Pick logo was unappealing and often failed to reproduce well. This logo and the type styling that went with it also meant that production involvement by a designer was required.
Solutions Proposed
We changed the name of the page from "Recordings" to "New on Disc." This felt more contemporary and it addressed the question of why readers should read the reviews: they're what's new.
I eliminated the headline across the top of the page.
I eliminated the bold dropcaps.
I reworked the typography for the CD title and musical artist. In the proces, I tried out many different type lengths and configurations.
I changed the Franklin body text in the CD Pick to a Century style I had established as a standard eslewhere in the section. I also got rid of the CD Pick logo. Doing these two things eliminated the need for production involvement by a designer. The entire page could now be handled by the newspaper's pagination system.
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