New look, new philosophy

As you head back to school this fall, you’re likely tonotice a few cosmetic changes made to the campus while you weregone.

Construction workers have spent the summer paving the boulevardwith a new layer of concrete to cover up potholes. The policedepartment has removed the tire-popping treadles that guardedseveral of the campus’s parking lots. And the Laura LeeBlanton building now stands as an imposing landmark on theuniversity’s east entrance.

But among those slightly more significant changes, The DailyCampus has undergone some cosmetic brushing-up as well.

The previous look of the paper was the result of a good designsubject to years of tweaks and different editorial visions. Itspages began to resemble a mongrel pup, mixing the best of allbreeds and throwing consistency and a sense of style to thewind.

This summer, we wiped the slate clean tried to tie in all of theuseful elements developed in the past into a whole new look andfeel for the paper. Instead of our old standard look, you’llnotice our new high contrast design that emphasizes features suchas pulled quotes, sidebars, info boxes and other elements allowingyou to find the information that you need more easily. We’veswitched the fonts to make our stories easier on the eyes. Andwe’ve updated our “DC” logo to give the paper asense of branding.

We hope that the result will be a cleaner and more appealingpublication for our readers. A new look can be a beautiful thing.We hope that by revamping our look visually, we’ll also beable to take stock of our content and adjust to bring you a bettercommunity newspaper.

Here are a few of our goals for the fall semester:

New design, new concepts.

Newspapers across the country are reconsidering the wayinformation is packaged in their papers. Readers often complainedabout getting lost in a sea of gray on the front pages of manymajor papers. Now, you’ll notice much more emphasis on visualelements that can also be used to tell the story. From high-qualityphotojournalism to informational graphics, most papers have added afew visual islands in the sea of text. We hope to further emphasizethe importance of our visual presentation at The Daily Campus thisfall to make our stories easier to read and to allow you to get abroader sense of our stories – one that engages you on asmany levels as possible.

Moving beyond events coverage.

While it is important for us to cover major events on ourcampus, too often we get bogged down in the details about theevents themselves. For instance, in a fictional story about aFrench club cheese tasting, we have spent too much time focusing onthe cheese that was tasted rather than the larger issue. Perhapsmembership in the French club has grown phenomenally over the pastsemester and the membership dues have allowed them to purchasetop-quality imported cheeses to taste. That’s the real story.We hope to use our event coverage as an entry point to delve deeperinto the issues that are often overlooked on our campus.

Keeping an eye on every corner of campus.

You may have noticed last year that during the War in Iraq weslipped into putting a lot of national and international news onour front pages. While those events were important, we realize thatThe Daily Campus is not the first place our readers are going toturn when trying to find out what’s going on in the world.However, we hope that it is the first place you turn when trying tofind out what’s going on at SMU. We hope to incorporateexpert analysis from students and professors reflecting on nationaland international events. But if you know about something importantgoing on around the Hilltop that we’re missing, let usknow.

The goal of these changes is to make The Daily Campus amust-read publication. We know that you read and snicker over thepolice reports at breakfast. We’ve seen you folding the paperover and working the crosswords in class. We want you to find therest of our content that compelling.

If you have any suggestions or comments on our new vision,please feel free to call me at (214) 768-1512 or e-mail me [email protected]

And as always, if you’re interested in getting caught upin our new vision, we’re always looking for new writers,photographers and editors.

Here’s to a great semester and here’s to a moremeaningful relationship to our readers.