NRC was named European Newspaper of the Year on Thursday. The jury of this European prize for newspaper design believes that the Dutch newspaper looks “young, dynamic and progressive”, and particularly praises the ability of NRC to extend the “modern look” of the printed newspaper to online.
Anne-Marije Vendeville, art director of NRC sees the prize as a reward for “the efforts of the creative teams to jointly develop a powerful, recognizable visual language” that ensures unity between the paper newspaper, NRC online, podcasts and expressions on social media. “The reader immediately sees: hey, that’s what it is NRC.” The newspaper is no longer just the written word, she says, “visual journalism is at least as important. Visual journalism can make complex stories accessible, surprise the reader and tell a story in a different way.”
The European Newspaper Award is the most important prize competition for newspaper design in Europe. It has been organized since 1999 by the German designer Norbert Köpper together with three German-language press magazines. There are twenty prizes to be awarded. NRC won the top prize in the “national newspaper” category. In the three other categories were awarded: the German Tagesspiegel (regional newspaper), Freitag (weekly) and the Greek business newspaper Naftemporiki (small newspaper). This year, 136 newspapers from 22 countries participated in the competition. News organizations pay a one-off fee of three hundred euros to participate in the prize. Previous Dutch winners include: de Volkskrant, Fidelity and The Financial Times.
Visual narration
Vendeville is also happy with the mention in the jury report of the production ‘The porcelain stowaway’ by Hugo Logtenberg, Pepijn Barnard and Roland Blokhuizen. Vendeville: “This production started completely digitally with a multidisciplinary team. A storyboard was created and the author adapted his story to fit the visual narrative. The 3D animations of the plane and the stowaway really added value to the article, the reading figures went through the roof.” The article later appeared in the paper newspaper, in the recently restyled Weekend section. “In this section, good navigation is at the top of the set design rules. It grid is constructed in such a way that various elements can be integrated in a sleek manner. It was also a beautiful production there.”
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The porcelain stowaway
Her job has changed a lot in recent years, says Vendeville: “In the past, the text was the starting point, then the form usually followed. Now we are doing more at the same time. If you put people with different expertise together, from the very first idea, beautiful original stories can emerge. Form, content and technology must go hand in hand. Collaboration is essential between editors, photographers, designers, infographic makers and illustrators. “There are also many freelancers. Freelancers are indispensable to the newspaper.”
Her role model is the Spanish newspaper designer Francesco Franchi. “His infographics are sleek and always have a nice color palette.” She also likes the work of Jaap Biemans, art director of Volkskrant Magazine: “Because he continues to surprise me with his creative covers.” Vendeville is also a fan of the online designs of The New York Times, The South China Morning Post and the graphics department of the Reuters news agency. Vendeville thinks there is still a lot to discover in visual journalism: “We use 3D illustrations and moving images for online. But you have to make sure that it turns out to be functional, that the article is lifted up by it and not snowed under. Readability and accessibility remain extremely important.”
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