Wednesday, May 12, 2010

USAT | With these banner ads, a beast for the eyes

On days like today, when USA Today is publishing a fixed banner advertisement, stripped across the top of its homepage, I struggle to sort through a jumble of headlines and other visuals competing for my attention. Clean, it's not (click image for bigger view):

Will USAT, plus The Arizona Republic, the Detroit Free Press, and The Indianapolis Star continue to be exempt from the one-size-fits-all website template, when the new version is launched for the community papers in coming months? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.
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6 comments:

  1. Anonymous5/12/2010 8:48 PM

    Adblock Plus is your friend.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous5/12/2010 9:01 PM

    Your ads, comparatively, are more obnoxious. But I don't really care in either place. I, like most people I suspect, are used to ads, having seen them for something like a gazillion years.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous5/12/2010 9:25 PM

    Have another scotch on the rocks Hunke. Martore and Dubow won't know what you are up to. Keep the shit coming.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous5/12/2010 10:34 PM

    Good one, 9:01. It's like he doesn't even realize his are close to the same.

    And is it that hard to see where the news starts on the USA Today site?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Jim Hopkins5/12/2010 10:46 PM

    To tell the truth, I'm not so crazy about my ads, either.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous5/13/2010 9:08 AM

    I think yes, the biggest properties will continue to be exempt.

    When we did Go4 in Broadcast, KUSA and KARE (from what I'm told) did their damnedest to break out of the design that was handed down to us -- they used their own fonts, they didn't respect the color palettes, they didn't respect the column widths. It was very frustrating for me as a web developer who was trying to innovate within the rules to see other stations flagrantly breaking the rules.

    I'm sure the smaller papers will continue to look angrily upon the larger ones as the larger ones simply ignore the rules.

    ReplyDelete

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