i hate change
wednesday, july 25, 2001
okay. sweden has two major national evening newspapers (though selling them at 10 am sort of defeats the evening part of the description... ) - expressen and aftonbladet. obviously, they have to compete for the same audience every day so they are fairly similar in how they look and work. the real differences are their various daily columnists and entertainment reporting.
well. for quite a while now, expressen has been the underdog. i don't think it's the paper itself that has been the problem, but rather the fact that aftonbladet early on created a really good, thorough, daily website that hooked a lot of readers and left expressen behind.
i'm an underdog kind of girl, and i've also found that expressen has edgier, younger columnists, and since they now feature at least three of my favourite feminist columnists (linda skugge, she was hired 8-9 years ago as a teenager and it's been really cool to see a national newspaper stand by a really controversial, acidic bitch writer for that long no matter what) i make a point out of buying expressen over aftonbladet. so far so good.
until today. they re-designed expressen! to smooth things over and lure people in, they are offering today's issue for free, but blergh! i'm so annoyed. it's hideous! (here's where i mention the part where i am a beginners layout student at my college newspaper so the way things are designed in print bothers me more than it used to)
we're talking the following colours mixed: pale red logo, purpleblue horizontal bars, flat burgundy vertical bars (FAT bars to boot!), horrid ocean grean details and PEACH coloured boxes here and there! the layout is messy and distracting and not as inviting as i think they intended it to. blergh!
ugly ugly ugly. i'm disturbed. i'm giving it a couple of more tries but if i continue to hate it, i may convert to strictly reading expressen online. thank ghod they haven't re-designed that website yet.
i hate when they ruin a good thing (without asking me first).
eh. nevermind me. i'm maxed out on painkillers. cramps from hell.
