Are Newspapers Over-Designed?

Aside from buying a Wall Street Journal two or three days a week, flipping through a free USA Today from the hotel when traveling and barely glancing at the local paper each morning (until football season, when I hit the sports page harder), I spend a lot less time reading newspapers than I used to. Years ago, I was so into newspapers that I had the New York edition of the New York Times mailed to me daily.

Nowadays I mostly rely on the internet for news, avoiding television almost entirely. Obviously, I'm not alone in this. Newspaper circulation has been declining for many years in the USA, and so have ratings for the major broadcast network news programs.

Newspapers have been fighting the trend, but declining circulation has yielded declining advertising revenue. Fewer ads means smaller papers as publishers try to maintain a profitable advertising - news hole page relationship.

There's another thing newspapers are doing that has annoyed me for several years. I'm writing about it now thanks to this item on James Lileks' blog. Besides blogging, Lileks is a columnist at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and writes books on the side.

Here is what he said:

* * * * *
I think a lot about newspapers every day, partly because I work for one, partly because I’m revising a novel set in the glory days of a medium-sized newspaper in a medium-sized metropolitan era that has four. Four papers. I invented one for the books, the Citizen-Herald; it’s obviously not the Star-Tribune, since that exists in the books as well. When I think what the pages of the Citizen-Herald might have looked like, I realize one of the things that did papers in:

Good design.

Or rather, design, period. Big headlines, explanatory decks, good pictures, careful layout, splashy graphics - everything that presents the content takes away from the content. If you have a thick news hole and you’re putting out a tab with 60 pages, chock full of ads, you have the luxury to play, to stretch, to impress. But the model for the Citizen-Herald is the old Star newspaper in the 30s and 40s, a wide-swinging scrappy trolley-reader broadsheet that captured the jostle and bustle of the town in almost molecular detail. Eight to ten stories on the front page, at least. Twice as much on the inside. Sure, half of it was inconsequential - chatter and trivia, minor mayhem on the road next to a squib about an election in Malay, but it presented the impression of a world so vibrant it could barely be contained in the thin columns of newsprint. A good newspaper isn’t one you read front to back; a good newspaper is one you regret you didn’t read front to back, because it’s simply impossible to read it all.

The Star was like that - the big stories at the top of the page, pictures of giveaway kittens or a kid in a cast because he fell off a roof, Loop shootings, auto wrecks on the parkway, holdup in a cafe, each story getting smaller as you went down the page, until the bottom items were a two-line piece on Siamese imports, and an ad for Sanitary Bread.

* * * * *
An example front page is below.

The design feature that bothers me the most is increased use of large, color photographs on the front page (the example above is smaller than many I've seen). To me, it's a waste of space that could be devoted to news.

Like Likeks, I am so old-fashioned!

Alajalov: Illustrator or Cartoonist?

When Constantin Alajalov (1900-1987) painted the 22 June 1935 cover for The New Yorker magazine, employment prospects for college graduates were uncertain. I'm drafting this post mid-June, at the tail end of this year's graduation ceremony season, and a similar situation holds. In both cases, there was serious economic under-performance. But in 1935 college graduates were a much smaller share of the 22-year-old or thereabouts population, so supply-demand factors were more in their favor back then even though times were tough.

Alajalov (name accented on the third syllable) was a popular illustrator from the late 1920s into the 1960s, best known for magazine cover illustrations he created for Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The Saturday Evening Post. Biographical information on the internet is sparse. And even inaccurate: his Wikipedia entry states that the Russian Revolution happened in 1916 -- 1917 was the actual year. The most useful link that I could find is here. There are some books from the 1940s dealing with illustrators containing sections about Alajalov, but this recent, similar kind of book by Fred Taraba might be easier to locate.

Taraba mentions that Alajalov was a fine-art painter and muralist as well as an illustrator. He and other sources stress that Alajalov would take a good deal of time and trouble to make the settings of his illustrations as accurate as possible. I think this care was essential because his signature work seems more cartoon-like than straight illustration. Yet the cartoonishness lies mostly in the way he depicted the faces of his subjects. And like a good cartoon, those faces reveal the character and current thought or emotion of those subjects. Further, the settings and situations he depicts match or come close to matching the experience of his viewers. Taraba notes that Alajalov tailored these elements to fit the average readership of The New Yorker (big-city, supposed sophisticates) and the Post (Middle America).

A final thought before turning to more examples of Alajalov's work. In his heyday, aside from The New Yorker and some 1920s publications such as Life and Judge, most mass-circulation magazine illustration for stories and non-fiction articles was naturalistic. So during much of his career, Alajalov's approach was largely unique (I have a major exception in mind, and will write about him at another time). Today, to dredge up a cliché, the shoe is on the other foot: comparatively little magazine illustration is naturalistic, the bulk being cartoon-like in one way or another.

Gallery

The New Yorker - 28 October, 1939

The New Yorker - 1 March, 1941

The Saturday Evening Post - 2 May, 1959

The Saturday Evening Post - 31 December, 1949

Emile Bernard: He Could Have Been Gauguin

Émile Bernard (1868-1941) strikes me as currently having a reputation in that gray zone between famous and footnote. In part, that might be because most of his noteworthy paintings were done over a comparatively short span of years early in his career. Perhaps a more important reason is that he was soon overshadowed by an artist whose work he influenced, an artist who became famous. Details can be found in this Wikipedia entry.

Bernard was involved in the development of Cloisonnism and Synthetism around the time he was working in Pont-Aven, a coastal town near the western tip of Brittany that was popular with artists. Paul Gauguin, who had decided to become a full-time artist, traveled there to paint and rub elbows with fellow painters while being able to live cheaply. At this time, Gauguin and Bernard painted in a similar style and they later disputed who influenced the other.

However, something noteworthy is that Bernard, by the time he was 20, had formed a philosophy of art that, according to Herbert Read in an essay that can be found here, greatly influenced Gauguin's drift from Impressionism to favor what Bernard had been contending. Now for some irony: While Gauguin followed the Pont-Aven path, Bernard did not; at least that's what the appearance of his later paintings suggests. Well, actually he continued to include some outlining in his images, and use of outlines was a component of the theory he spun when he was young.

Bernard was interested in religion and related issues to the point where his artistic career shifted away from the avant-garde. For example, he lived in Egypt for 10 years starting 1893 and in some respects "went native." After returning to France his career drifted, though he did eventually instruct at the École des Beaux-Arts.

Here are a few examples of his work.

Gallery

Madeleine au Bois d'Amour - 1888

The Harvest - 1888

Breton Women in the Meadow - 1888
The two paintings immediately above are similar to what Gauguin was painting in Pont-Aven.

The Three Races - 1898
Ten years later, Cloisonnism had been abandoned.

Lady With a Fan (also known by other titles)
This was probably done while in Egypt.

Portrait - c.1928
A touch of 1920s simplified-surfaces modernism at this point in his career.

Multi-Colored Cars

For quite a few years now, the typical new car comes painted in a single color. But from the 1920s through the 1950s and even beyond, many cars came painted with two or more colors, two being the most common variety by far. They were called "two-tone paint jobs" back in those days.

The purpose of using more than one color to paint a car is purely aesthetic, even cosmetic. Color choices might make a car appear a little taller or shorter or even longer, depending upon where the colors were applied. Or features such as fenders or aspects of body shape might be highlighted.

Why did two-toning fall out of favor. I don't know for sure, but offer two reasons that make sense to me. One reason had to do with a reaction by American automobile stylists against the excesses of the late 1950s when tail fins sprouted and three-tone paint jobs appeared. In the 1960s car design became more restrained and single-tone paint helped reinforce the new seriousness.

Another reason, more appropriate to the 1970s and later, was related to the movement to improve efficiency and lower the cost of building cars. In the 1950s, for example, car makers offered many options that a buyer could select or reject -- radio, air conditioning, type of transmission, powered versus hand-crank windows, bumper guards, and many more including choice of paint from a list of currently available colors. The number of such options reached the point that the number of possible combinations became astronomically large. Potentially each car on the assembly line would differ in some way from all the others. This was abetted by the fact that many buyers ordered a car with the exact set of options they wanted rather than accepting a car available on the dealer's lot.

A practical result of all this customization was a decrease in quality because workers had to vary their tasks according to the whims on a car's options tag. And it was difficult to make sure that required parts were available when needed.

By the 1980s American manufacturers were following the Japanese practice of offering a limited selection of options packages. One result was that a buyer usually couldn't get his exact set of desired options when selecting a car. Another was that manufacturers could build vehicles more efficiently with better quality results.

By eliminating two-tone color schemes, car companies greatly reduced the number of combinations moving along assembly lines. Consider: Assume four accessory packages and ten available colors -- that's 40 combinations. Adding an unlimited selection of two colors from the list would result in hundreds of combinations.

That said, let's harken back to the days when multicolor cars were common and take a look:

Gallery

1954 Pontiac

1947 Buick
These are examples of two-toning during its post- World War 2 heyday. The Buick has its top's color extending down a raised section of the hood. The Pontiac's top color does not cover the upper part of the doors, though Chryslers of that vintage had the top color extending down to a chrome strip mounted just below the bottoms of the side windows.

1956 Dodge

1956 Packard Caribbean
Here we have three-tone paint jobs. Actually, these were more limited than one might think; typically the colors were black, an off-white and a bright color of some kind. This prevented ugly color clashes that might make a company's cars look ridiculous and it simplified manufacturing. The Packard shown here is painted white along with two other colors. Most Packard Caribbeans of the 1955 and 1956 models years were like the Dodge, using black, a white and something else.

1933 Studebaker
In the 1920s and early 30s two-tone applications were similar to that of the Studebaker shown here, fenders having a different color than the body -- though the top of the body often shared the accent color of the fenders..

1929 Ruxton

1930 Ruxton
Here are two Ruxton survivors from the 300 or so ever built. These have multi-tone paint jobs, the colors selected and patterns designed by the prolific, highly talented Joseph Urban. The car at the top is in the Tampa Bay Automobile Museum, and seems to sport at least four colors. The one below is in the Blackhawk Museum in the San Francisco Bay area and I count six colors on it.

1925 Citroën B12
Finally we have a Citroën with a color scheme by modernist designer Sonia Delaunay. The only photo I can find is in black and white, so I don't know how many colors were used -- at least four or five -- or what they were.

Our Very Own Thomas Kinkade

The photo above is of a Thomas Kinkade (1958-2012) print on a wall of our living room. You are no doubt wondering why it is there and why I'm bothering to write about it.

The reason I'm writing about it is because Kinkade died not long ago, thereby providing a journalistic "hook" for the story of why the print is on our wall.

First, for those not familiar with Kinkade, here is his Wikipedia entry and here is his obituary from The New York Times. The Kinkade organization's site deals with the image here.

Now for the story.

About five years ago my wife and I were staying in Monterey, California. Having checked out of our hotel, I drove up the hill from Cannery Row and then turned left to head through downtown to Highway 1. A block or so later I noticed a large, wooden Victorian style house perched farther up the hill away from the street with its various decorative bits painted in a variety of colors. Near street level was a sign reading "Thomas Kinkade National Archive."

That puzzled me. I knew who Thomas Kinkade was and I knew that the Unites States government has a system of National Archives, but the juxtaposition of his name and archives made no immediate sense. So, spotting an open area along the curb, I parked the car and then we climbed the steps and entered.

As you probably guessed, this "National Archive" was part of Kinkade's vast commercial empire, part sales operation and part gallery. The gallery aspect was interesting in that it contained some original paintings, not just giclée prints. Moreover, not all the paintings featured thatch-roofed cottages with gently glowing windows at twilight. It seems that Kinkade had attended the Art Center College in Pasadena, a top-notch professional school and did a fair amount of plein-air painting with an impressionist touch before and even after he struck gold with his signature style and subject matter. My take at the time was that some of these paintings were pretty good -- I liked them better than his main commercial work -- but they weren't outstanding, either.

Anyway, we toured the "Archive" and before leaving, the young sales guy who was at our heels the entire time mentioned that Kinkade only made one painting in Seattle (we'd told him where we were from). He flipped through one of Kinkade's books and showed it to us. My wife was taken by it because it was a recognizable Seattle scene and ordered a framed print that arrived a few months later.

If you ever visit Seattle you can go to the exact spot where he made the painting. The block at the northwest corner of First Avenue and Pine Street contains two local landmarks one is a hotel called The Inn at the Market (referring to the famous Pike Place Market area down the block). The other is the original store of the Sur La Table kitchenware chain, visible at the right of the painting. If you walk down Pine Street on the right side you will find the entrance to a courtyard leading to the hotel entrance and some shops. Kinkade's spot was two or three yards (metres) out in the street from the courtyard entrance. This put him slightly beyond parked cars, running the risk of being struck by street traffic.

Note one composition error that he could have avoided: a green object to the left of the Public Market sign has its bottom aligning with the West Seattle shoreline in the background.

It's not an image I would have purchased. I'm indifferent to even Kinkade's best work. But since my wife likes it, I'm okay with it.

The Unpretentious Clarence Gagnon

My childish artistic temperament favors dramatic and flashy paintings. Well, not extreme paintings of that kind, but paintings tending in that direction. Despite that, I don't mind quieter paintings, provided that they are interesting and well-done.

That would be the case for many of the works of Clarence Gagnon (1881-1942), a Québecois painter contemporary of the better-known Group of Seven. Rather than abandon civilization for painting sprees in the northern Ontario wilderness as most of the Seven did, Gagnon's preferred inspiration was village and country life along the St. Lawrence River.

A sketchy Wikipedia entry on Gagnon is here and his National Gallery biographical sketch is here.

With few exceptions, Gagnon's paintings dealt with scenes of Québec, this despite spending half his adult life in France. While living in France, he would paint pictures dealing with Québec rather than French scenes.

The images below don't have much flash and dash, but I hope they will interest you.

Gallery

Près de la Bai-Saint-Paul - c.1914

The Ice Bridge, Québec - 1919-20
During severe winters, the St. Lawrence River could freeze over to the point that people, horses and sleds could be supported. This allowed crossing without the need of a boat. (The nearest bridges were far upriver.)

Village in the Laurentian Mountains - 1925

Laurentian Village - c.1924

Horse Racing in Winter, Québec - c.1925

Evening on the North Shore - 1924
The title refers to the north shore of the St. Lawrence River where Bai-Saint-Paul and Gagnon's favorite painting grounds lay.

New Chihuly Museum

Dale Chihuly (born 1941) is probably the most famous living artist sculpting in glass. He happens to be a local boy, born in Tacoma and graduating in Interior Design from the University of Washington's School of Art where we overlapped for a year or so but never met.

Tacoma has had a museum devoted to glass art and some of Chihuly's works for several years. Seattle just got into this act, opening the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum a few days ago. Its web site is here. Chihuly's own web site is here and his Wikipedia entry here.

My knowledge about sculpture of any kind is limited, so I have nothing to say about Chihuly's work. I wasn't even very interested in visiting the new museum, but my wife dragged me in while we were at the Seattle Center (site of the 1962 Century 21 world's fair) for other reasons. I wasn't packing my camera, so the photos below were grabbed from various Internet sites.

Gallery

Flashy photo of museum gallery, a Chihuly work and the Space Needle

Exterior view shortly before opening

Views of some of the exhibits

I think the museum is nicely done. The interior features a number of elaborate works mostly from the early part of his career. Outside is a garden where glass sculptures and plants coexist. My garden-loving wife was highly enthused about the juxtapositions, so I'll take her word for it.