A few years ago during bouts of insomnia, I used to imagine redesigning a newspaper, any newspaper. I’d always get stuck on the Johannesburg newspaper, City Press, historically aimed at black readers.  I hated their ugly design. (I wrote some freelance pieces for them in the early 1990s).  Now the paper is having a design face-over.  That’s the old design on the left and the new on the right. Link to the web page of the graphic designer, Peter Ong, responsible for the redesign.  (BTW, I think the redesign has a lot to do with the fact that it has a new editor, Ferial Haffajee, formerly editor of the Mail & Guardian).

For more on the redesign, see also Charles Apple‘s website as well as The Daily Maverick, which contains some errors.

* Nowadays when I have insomnia, I play computer games.

Further Reading

Goodbye, Piassa

The demolition of an historic district in Addis Ababa shows a central contradiction of modernization: the desire to improve the country while devaluing its people and culture.