The aim of the first day of the design sprint was to try to find out as much about our subject as possible. This was done through quick 10 minute "sprints" where we intensively research one topic or aspect and then stop after the timer ends and discuss what we've found. This turned out to be a great way of working as we were able to quickly gain a broad understanding of publishing, both off and online. Here are the topics we outlined for the day:
1. Competitors (Satirical Newspapers)
2. Online potential sources for articles
3. Newspaper layouts
4. Headlines
5. Funding models
6. What is the audience?
7. What stories are popular?
8. Outlets (Where can it be distributed?)
9. Categories of content online
-1-
We've found that a lot of the true satirical newspapers don't exist any more, and in fact were at their most popular in the late Victorian era. Examples of these include 'Diogenes', 'Punch' and 'Fun'.
Today's most prominent satirical newspapers are student papers, focussing on campus or college specific subject matter. An example of this is Oxford's Oxymoron.
Additionally, most newspapers and magazines that have a reputation for satire do not focus on it primarily, but instead incorporate it as a tone of voice or a specific subsection of the publication.
-2-
Main article sources and our observations:
The Onion
US-based and extremely popular. Subject matter is often foucsed on American Life and politics and might not be suitable for our publication. The Onion started as a printed newspaper which continues today.
The Daily Mash
UK-based humour, focussing on both current events and more broad subject matters.
The Faking News
Operated by one of india's largest news sources, The First Post. It is an english language website centred around Indian news and current events. It is similar in tone to the Onion.
News Biscuit
UK-based. Really quick turnaround. Great tagline - "The news before it happens"
The Framely Examiner
Parody of a small village newspaper where nothing happens.
Ironic Times
Just funny headlines and sometimes a sentence of explanation.
Newsthump
Parody of BBC. High quality content and good size length of articles. Clause in T&C that lets their articles be used for non-commercial purposes with attribution.
The Poke
Mix satirical new with funny stories from the real news. Overall not as high quality as the daily mash and others.
-3-
Private Eye
50% investigative journalism
50% Humour
£1.50
33 Pages
Yorkshire Post
70p
18 Pages
Huge newspaper format is very inconvenient for travel
The Times
£1
Large-scale advert on every spread
Large pictures within articles
Keep Calm and carry on advert spotted
Guardian
Well designed and typeset compared to others
Very tall and skinny 'Berliner' layout for lap-reading.
Mindful of the way people fold the newspaper.
Large breakout quotes
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We had some ideas for our own paper while reading these that we thought would be worth noting:
"Live Like a VIP" lottery ad in the Yorkshire Post - change to "Live like an MP"
Fake/Humour Weather
The 20 Best
"National Treasure"-esque feature
'Keep Calm and' worst examples
Pictures unrelated to their articles e.g. frogs
Offensive pictures through dot-to-dot
Which character are you style quiz
Puzzles etc.
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-4-
-5-
Funding models:
We identified 3 funding models used to sustain newspapers: Ad-funded, Community and subscription.
We wanted to make sure that our publication was, at least in theory, economically viable and sustainable. This is something we keep in mind as we design tomorrow.
-6-
It was difficult to identify a singular audience for satire as a whole, as it normally has a specific cultural or geographical focus. understanding of satire require some pre-existing knowledge of the subject matter and therefore is only applicable to a subset of people e.g. we didn't find the Faking News funny because it requires a partcular understanding of indian culture and current affairs.
We need to clearly understand what our audience needs to know before they can understand our content. As we are printed and not online, we need to make sure our content isn't as time sensitive as some of these sites. Articles that can be read in a year and still be relevant are worth the investment of print while ephemeral articles on current affairs are not.
-7-
Popular articles differ depending on the audience of each specific sight. Broadly, commentary on politics and social media are very popular topics across all the sites at the time of our research.
-8-
We found that the outlets for our publication would differ depending on a number of factors including tone of voice, visual style, production price and volume. Independent stockists with a broad acceptance policy include:
Village - Leeds
Magma - London
Extra Bones - London
Lik + Neon - London
Bookartshop - London
The Old Sweet Shop - Sheffield
No Guts No Glory - Exeter
-9-
Here are categories we identified in the online sources that might be good sections for the newspaper:
UK
Politics
Sports
Entertainment
World
Health
Business
Technology
Education
Technology
Environment
Science
Opinion
Culture
Crime
Media
World News
Agony Aunt
Creative industry
Celebrity
Business
Features:
Horoscope
Caption competitions
Quotes
Bingo
Letters
Comics
We liked the idea of taking elements of internet interaction and translating them to print in a way that was intentionally frustrating. Examples of this could be:
-Futility of print
URLs (blue underline and one purple clicked link)
Scroll Bars
Links to pages you can never reach
Loading icons
Cookies Warning
Hashtags
Image sliders that are static
Popups
Daily round up:
Today has been an interesting process, and I felt that the quick-fire research method gave us a much larger understanding of the broader context our newspaper will exist in and has opened up so many design opportunities to explore tomorrow. We have really clarified the design problem in a way that would be really difficult to do in a traditional design process.
Here are some thoughts for tomorrow:
We identified four approaches that we could take in regards to the content of the magazine. These take into consideration the funding problems and copyright issues which need to be adressed.
1.
Source amateur content from forums/online
-Curate the newspaper
-Sell
2.
Ask large satire sites for permission to print articles in exchange for ad-space and promotion
3.
Mix large sources without permission for a non-commercial college project as a proposal for an ecosytem that could viably exist.
4.
Commission our own content within the set tone of voice of the paper
Plan for tomorrow:
Day 2 is rapid idea generation.
We will take into consideration what we have learnt today and design loads of quick solutions which mix these elements. At the end of day we should have a table full of possible solutions and we will pick the best to carry forward to development stage.
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