Since the announcement that The Advocate purchased The Times-Picayune and its website, NOLA.com, I’ve been eager to see the launch of the combined brands starting today (July 1).

The Advocate did a major redesign in 2013, changing some inside section names and design furniture (double rules, inset main packages, etc.) to hearken to aspects of a longtime Times-Picayune design. An inside news section was renamed Metro, as it was in the Picayune, and its feature section, People, was renamed Eat Play Live, playing off the Living section name in the T-P. With today’s launch, the inside sections begin to reflect the names of the Picayune sections: Eat Play Live is now Living.

Let’s take a look at today’s paper:

This is your prototypical Advocate front page. The only difference in terms of the design from what readers have seen since its 2013 redesign is the addition of The Times-Picayune to the nameplate. When Gambit editor Kevin Allman tweeted a preview of the combined nameplate in May, I was less than enthusiastic.

In its final iteration, they scrapped the drop shadow, dropped the rule separating the two nameplates and put The Times-Picayune on top, as the more familiar brand in the city. But the biggest problem with the combined nameplate comes as a result of how it is treated, as we’ll discuss below.

Kudos for dropping the drop shadows from the nameplates, but they have introduced a number of other problems.

Picture this: you’re in a crowded restaurant. The acoustics are such that each table is shouting just to be heard by a person sitting mere inches from you. Now imagine that every person at every table is doing the exact same thing. That’s one noisy restaurant, isn’t it? If you’re a patron standing in the middle of that restaurant, and I came to you and asked, “OK, hearing all these conversations, what is the most important thing being said here right now?” It would be hard to tell, wouldn’t it? When everything is competing for your attention, nothing is getting your attention.

1. Way too many teasers. The real estate you give to a story tease at the top of the fold says a lot. It says “we think this story is so important, we are putting it at the absolute most visible position on the front page.” In a box, on a rack, you see only the top half of this newspaper. “Above the fold” is what we say in the biz. There’s a tendency to want to get a lot of entry points up there and to show a reader just how much is available inside. But editorially, consider just how vital each and every one of those are.

   The solution: promote what readers don’t already know. Promo the Gayle Benson story, which seems to be a new feature on the Saints and Pelicans owner. If there was new information on the JJ Redick deal, that, too, would have been an option. Perhaps one of the writers has exclusive information on the contract, or an analysis of what this will do for the Pelicans lineup. Either way, don’t state the obvious.

   
   

2. Too much text. I think a well-crafted, down-page teaser can be an effective tool to guide readers inside. It also gives you a chance to give a little more text than you can in a top promo (sometimes called a skybox, billboard, a grab — several papers have different terms for the same thing). But that coveted real estate needs special treatment. If you’re trying to boost your rack sales, you want to grab the attention of a potential buyer with not only the display but also the words at the top of the page. You can’t can’t assume a reader will be just a few inches from a display box or rack. Imagine a person walking down the street, several feet from the point of sale and you want to get that person to think, “What are they saying about Gayle Benson? Let me walk over there and purchase this paper.”

   There also are so many typefaces and type treatments up there that make it so busy and difficult to read. There is power in the simplicity of your display type.

3. Overcrowding the nameplate. In this particular scenario, this is probably the most important. When you have the name of not one newspaper, but two, you have to be extra careful about how those two elements play together. Once you start peppering things around it, you’ve got two nameplates that are swallowed up by design chaos. Especially on Day One of this combined product, wouldn’t you want to really showcase the two together? The nameplates vanish. Given that the nameplates are smaller, they need some negative space to draw in eyes to it. That doesn’t happen here.

Scaling back the promos and taking some time to really approach those with purpose and good editing would make these a better statement piece.

Let’s also talk about the peculiar placement of the NOLA.com logo. The purchase of The Times-Picayune and its website were for its brand recognition within the market, and for NOLA.com’s large digital audience across myriad platforms. Its placement here in the promos seems cavalier and purposeless. It needs to find a permanent home among the furniture of front page. They could easily drop the tagline under the nameplates (again, too type up there) and place the NOLA.com centered on the thick rule (an Advocate staple).

Let’s move down the page:

The letter from editor Peter Kovacs is a good inclusion on a day such as today. It could also use some better spacing in the layering of the headlines. The drop shadow on the screened box (a tactic that been employed on past Times-Picayune pages from time to time) is dated. Also, with a screen box, that already sets it off from the rest of the page. There is no need for the drop shadow or the tilted presentation.

The inside covers kept the drop shadows that have been part of The Advocate look since 2013. What’s curious is that there is no labeling of either newspaper on the section fronts. The website NOLA.com, however, is featured in the furniture. Here’s a look at the Monday inside covers:

Inside folios, however, do feature the name of the newspapers.

Online, I think they did a nice job integrating the three media products into one. It’s clean, has enough air around the elements and gives good prominence to the NOLA.com logo.

What do you think of the launch? What would you keep or change?