The Springfield, Ill., alt-weekly last week debuted a new-look paper with larger pages and stich-and-trim binding. Times publisher Sharon Whalen says Topaz Design consulted on the project, but the Times design staff had a major hand in the redesign as well.
Twenty-five of the 43 AAN publishers who responded to a survey on Friday afternoon said they were interested in running house ads promoting the Gambit Relief Fund. So AAN asked Katherine Topaz of Topaz Design to create a quarter-page vertical ad (the size preferred by 78 percent of the respondents) that could be easily adapted by AAN members for use in their own papers. Kat ended up designing three of them, and they are now available for download from this page in the AAN Resource Library. An even larger majority of respondents said they were interested in running ads directing reader contributions to general Katrina-relief organizations sanctioned by AAN, so another set of quarter-page ads will be created once the association identifies general relief funds that make sense for its members.
