Wednesday, March 5, 2008

jp.dk The print/pdf Jutland Post now uses bullet points for leads. (Click for larger image.)

Every now and then I spot a design trend that seems to have started on one platform and then converted to another.

I see that the print and pdf editions of Denmark's Jutland Post have begun writing most leads as two bullet points. Sort of makes sense, as bullet points are faster to scan. It also seems TV news design often borrows from Web design.

This makes me think of two things:

• Newspaper design hasn't changed much over the past 10 years. (I'm a bit unfair -- but...)
• Online users' habits are changing faster than ever before. We now expect to scan, choose, and move on instantly. We don't watch one-hour television shows, we watch two-minute YouTube videos. These new habits are probably used across platforms.

If users' habits are changing while the product stays the same, we might have a problem.

So I thought: How might a newspaper look if it was invented today by a bunch of Web editors, and aimed at the average no-patience readers?

Leads written as bullet points seem like a nice detail. But what else might make sense to an audience with too little time? Please share your ideas in the comments.

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