Arkansas weekly biz paper undergoes redesign

Arkansas Business, a weekly business newspaper, rolled out Friday its first redesign since 1993.

A story on its website states, “Ron Reason of Chicago, an internationally known design, strategy and branding consultant, helped lead the charge to the new look. His experience includes redesigning the look of The Wall Street Journal, Advertising Age and Crain’s Chicago Business. Reason describes in a blog on his website what has changed in Arkansas Business.

“‘The newspaper is unveiling new features, more graphics, and new elements to distill and project the expertise of the subjects of its stories. Typographically, the new mix offers a greatly improved font for body text, as well as much greater contrast for headlines on the front page and on major stories inside, for department labels, and for boldface names within text — a key part of the publication each week,’ he writes.

“‘Making the paper easier for scanning was paramount, even though research shows a tremendous read-through rate, with the majority of readers spending 35 minutes or more with each issue. In-depth reading is an expectation with this audience, and the need to package longer stories with better photos and graphics has been addressed.’

“Arkansas Business Publisher Jeff Hankins notes in his column in Monday’s edition that this is the first redesign of the newspaper he’s seen since arriving at the publication in 1993.”

Read more here.