The rapid technological advancement and shifting reading habits are now forcing newspapers around the world to keep changing the way they look, with Kenya ’s The Star being the latest to abide by the book. The Star, formerly Nairobi Star, was designed and launched on the market on July 20.

This, despite the fact that newspaper had entered the vibrant Kenyan newspaper market barely one and half years ago. B)ut even the more established and dominant titles like The Daily Nation and The Standard have regularly altered their appearance and sought fresher ways of packaging their editorial content to attract the now dynamic and demanding modern newspaper reader.
 “Initially, newspapers were fighting each other. But now they have one big enemy – the internet. The newspapers have had to respond in a visual way. The smarter newspapers will have to keep redesigning themselves to adjust to market demands,” says David Billington, the man behind both the design of the initial Nairobi Star, which has now given birth to the new look The Star.
The internet, indeed, has so far offered the toughest challenge yet to newspapers around the world, not only delivering news and information at the click of a button but also turning out to be more reader responsive, faster and cheaper. “The internet has redesigned itself so that people can be attracted to read – has short and sharp stories. Newspapers have had to respond in a similar way, with shorter and sharper stories,” says Billington.

Other than spearheading the 2007 launch of Nairobi Star and now re-launch of The Star, David has also been behind the redesign and re – launch of The New Vision in Uganda, Bukede, also in Uganda, the Daily Express in Trinidad and Tobago, The Sunday Express in the UK, transforming it from a broadsheet to a compact tabloid, and also designing a popular magazine in the UK published by Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV. In total, he says, he has redesigned four newspapers in Africa , The Star included. “I have up to about fifteen major publishing groups for which I am consulting on design,” says Billington, a journalist turned designer who contends that the future of newspaper publishing shows that only the most creative and dynamic, meaning regularly remaking themselves, publications will survive.

The question in Kenya , of course, has been whether the launch and re-launch or redesigns really helps newspapers up their ante in the market. “Yes, the impact of redesign is really huge. The Daily Express in Trinidad and Tobago experienced a 20 percent increase in circulation after a redesign,” he says. Whether that has been the case with the Kenyan newspapers that have redesigned and re-launched numerous times is difficult to tell, as they rarely disclose their actual circulation figures, but it has been notable that newspapers easily abandon their supposedly new design features and fall back on the old design.  

This was the case with the Daily Nation’s redesign in 2001, which it slowly regressed after barely a month back to elements of the old design without any official explanation. Insiders however indicated that, despite initial impressive sales after the redesign, the feedback from readers was mainly negative, forcing the management to backtrack. “Nation is considered the newspaper of record in Kenya and therefore it is most likely they would find it difficult to completely depart from their current product without hurting the market. But The Star does not have such limitations,” he says.

The Standard has equally redesigned and re - launched its product three times in the last five years, but it has often quickly fallen back to the previous design thus making nonsense of the entire investment. It has also never been clear whether The Standard usually abandons the new design due to negative market responses or due to just its own inability to sustain the new design. “The Standard has improved tremendously in the last five years, but I still find the paper a bit disorganised and confused,” says Billington.

The interesting thing, however, is that newspapers have often reported huge circulation figures after every redesign and subsequent re-launch, after which the circulation suddenly slumps thus prompting a shift to the old and tested. In 2001, for example, The Nation reported high circulation figures soon after the re – launch despite negative feedback it later received. The same, apparently, applies to The Star on its re – launch on July 20.

 “The new look Star completely sold out. We had increased the print run and it just sold out,” says Billington, who also seeks to explain why the new look Star was not such a radical make over that the hype had warned it would be. “We did not want a culture shock for our readers. That is why we have just a slight make over and small changes in design. One has to be careful not to alienate loyal readers when doing a redesign for a newspaper,” he says, adding that the response from the market has been far too encouraging.

 

But he also has an explanation for the seeming disconnect between initial response from readers and eventual long term performance in the market of the newly redesigned papers. “When a newspaper is re – launched, readers usually rush to buy it just to see what is in there,” says Billington. But readers, he notes, retreat immediately they notice the product does not appeal to them, either in terms of content or visuals.

Billington however cautions design consultants against imposing text book design concepts on readers. “Give the readers what they want, not what you think they ought to have,” he quips, suggesting that most Kenyan papers could have fallen to the temptation of redesigning newspapers without prior market survey to establish what the readers want. That is, in his view, the redesigns by most Kenyan newspapers often end up aborting.

“I do not go into redesign with preconceived ideas. I have to understand the readers. I usually spent at least a week just walking around looking at the newsstands and newspapers shelves, talking to people and listening to what people would like to read. But I get the eventual brief on the nature of design to work on from the editors,” says Billington. He thinks Nation and Standard, despite redisigning their product numerous times, do not really have what the readers want. “We have gone out of our way to find out what readers want and I don’t think Nation and Standard have done that,” he says.

He says that his experience in Africa has taught him that, even though there are various journalism training colleges that churn out a high number of journalism graduates, there are no colleges that offer courses in design – very much unlike Europe . Most journalists and designers lack formal training in design and learn newspaper design on the job, which makes it very difficult to capture what readers want or sustain whatever type of design hired offer.

 

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