However, I would use the opportunity to start with some typographic improvements as well: To improve legibility, I would either introduce paragraph spacing, or indent all paragraphs that do not follow a space (not after headlines, images, new columns, new spaces, etc.).

Second, the articles are set very inconsistently, often with different fonts, and different leading which gives the pages a very unruly and chaotic appearance.

Maybe at this opportunity you could also remind the layouter to be more consistent in using “typographical” quotation marks (and not the “typewriter” marks), apostrophes (same), dashes (en or em, just use them right), ellipsis (either three periods with no-break spaces between … or [better] the ellipsis symbol), etc.

Once that is accomplished, you should look at a number of other issues: The drop caps are often set amateurishly, with too much space and never followed by capitalised (or small caps) words; superscripts are usually to big and bleed into previous lines; all-caps words (including abbreviations) should be printed at a reduced font size (or use small caps directly) … I could just go on like this.

And if that were a newspaper that I don’t like to spend time with, I wouldn’t even care. But it is just unfair to the authors of these articles that the DTP is so lousy.

It’s a minor point but I would leave it without a background and only put a background on a “focus” table-of-contents if there is one. See left bar of “Les Echos” in France for inspiration (but they don’t use colored background every day)

I am for big web address of course

The most pratical version is number 6 with multiple menus displaying the paper’s content and half an article to wet the reader’s appetite. Esthetically speaking, I would have the line seperating the vertical table of contents from the article removed. The table itself needs a little fine tuning to make it easy on the eye.

The best compromise among esthetics, content, and practicality, is verion 2. I agree that the dot is dispensable and might be more appropriately used to color code sections.

Im sure you will find a nice solution…

Best,

Kristioffer

It’s likely that the “focus” bar will indeed be used in cases where we have a special report. The difference in the logo between 5 and 6 is only in the prominence of the website address – and that is unintentional. We will take into account that it could be bigger for better effect.