(Mary Nesbitt)

If you read this you might have to kill yourself, as it's related to the World's Best-Designed Newspapers competition at which I judged this week. It was impressed on us that proceedings are confidential. So I'll try not to break the rules.

Not being a designer by profession or study, I'm not clear how I got to judge in the Society for News Design contest, but I hope it's because I try to see things from the perspective of the consumers, rather than the creators, of design. While appreciative - indeed, envious - of technique and artistry, my perspective is more about whether design is working for readers, based on what Readership Institute and other studies tell us about how and why people read newspapers.

Isn't that the ultimate test of design - does it attract people's attention? Does it cause them to stop and spend some time with a story, a package, a page, a section? Does it help them extract the most value in the limited time they have?

If you asked readers directly what constitutes good design, most would not be able to articulate it. But indirectly, in conversations and observed settings, they leave lots of clues.

For instance, design works for them when it clarifies and enhances the meaning and import of a story and helps them understand something they care about.

Design works when it makes it easy to find what they are looking for. It works when you can guide them to content of interest elsewhere in the paper - or in the information universe, for that matter.

Design aids graze-ability. Practically everyone, even heavy readers as Poynter has demonstrated with its Eyetrack research, uses visual cues to sample her way through the tastiest bits.

Design can contribute mightily to positive experiences people have with the newspaper. One of the experiences the Readership Institute has identified is "grabs me visually" and more of that experience is related to higher readership. Conversely, "drowning in news," where readers feel flooded with information, and "awkward to handle" are inhibitors of readership.

The other four judges (from three countries) had a variety of design skills and together we made a well-rounded and congenial team. With five different issues of 300 newspapers to peruse, it was a grueling few days but also a heartening opportunity to experience the variety of idioms, conventions and approaches that are practiced around the world. And the ingenuity and commitment of the journalists who produce them.

My fellow judges probably tired of me asking the "How would readers react" question, but our final statement affirms readers' primacy.

Yet words are cheap. Designers, like all journalists, have to be prepared to invest time in listening hard to consumers, observing how they use media and figuring out what engages them. We know that for many decades newspapers weren't very good at doing this - or rather, at doing much about what they heard. And as my colleague Stacy Lynch has documented, similar mistakes are being made with Web site design.

My plea to designers is this: become aggressive, knowledgeable advocates for the consumers of journalism, as much as for the practitioners and practice of your craft.

As shapers of a product that is bought, in part, because it is assembled, shaped and presented with judgment, get a more visceral sense of who's consuming it and how. Be on readers' side, and knowledgeably so.

Without this demonstrable reader-design connection, publishers in many parts of the world whose businesses are being roiled may well conclude print design is an unnecessary luxury. And who could blame them?


By Mary Nesbitt (m-nesbitt@northwestern.edu)
Mary Nesbitt is managing director of the Readership Institute.