A clean design for Boston's high tech business paper

Mass High Tech is an American City Business Journals publication based in Boston that covers the area’s high tech industry.

The paper won the best overall design award in its class of weekly papers at this year’s New England Press Association conference.

In giving the award, the judges stated, “Mass High Tech makes good use of photos, breakout information, graphics and other elements to create an easy-to-read journal that is smart and full of information. Good use of color and design elements to help the reader navigate. Border copy is easy on the eyes and bolded names help the average ‘skimmer’ to locate people and companies of interest.”

Douglas Banks, the paper’s editor, says, “We went through a redesign in 2006, and our design director, Joshua Knowlton, has done a great job of executing on that redesign, while at the same time letting some things evolve over time. The main goal for our front page each week is threefold: keep it clean and easy to read; choose an ‘anchor’ story, and then let the artwork and headline do their job of attracting eyeballs; and try not to do the same thing over and over again. Too often, tabloids get stuck in a rut, with pages taking the same shape, looking the same week after week. Josh has done an excellent job of not letting readers see the same design too often.”

Also, the paper’s sister publication, the Boston Business Journal, received a third place in the weekly category. Judges noted it had “good use of graphics and break-out information. My favorite section was People, which provided a well-designed plethora of information that was easy to navigate and provided some great takeaways.”

Here is an example from Mass High Tech earlier this month. I like the two-story design, and the fact that  there are pictures of six people on the front. I also like the large masthead with the teasers.