am (León, Mexico)

Pages from the first week after the redesign of the newspaper am (León, Mexico). García Media CEO/Founder, Mario García, Sr., described the new design elements on his blog:

The front page: Readers will see a more visually oriented front page than the one before the redesign. We have utilized the concept of the two-track front page here: the visual lead and the journalistic lead. The logo of the newspaper is part of the main promo display at the top. Various templates of the front page are created, so that the editors and designers can use the top of page one to surprise the reader visually, while incorporating visual elements of interest for stories found on the inside. However, the main visual in the top box could be the lead photo on the front page as well. There is limited use of text on the front page, allowing for the page to become more of a navigator.

The logo: While the name of the newspaper lends itself well to interesting treatments, as it is only two letters “am,” the original logo had dots between the a and the m. From the start, the publisher told me that he was open to a cleaning up of the logo, and so I contacted the great Jim Parkinson for the task. As always, Jim produced many versions of how he would create the new am logo and we selected the one you see here. Simple, elegant and without the dots between the letters.

The typography: The typographic components for “am” are Salvo Sans and Salvo Serif

Story structures: We created hierarchy through the use of various story structures, from lead to secondary to compacts to briefs.

Color: Notice that we have used color within the text, as in yellow highlights of particularly interesting passages in a story.