An area as beautiful as ours deserves a great looking newspaper, too. In freshening up the Gilroy Dispatch, we were conscious of its heritage, which dates back to 1868. So we updated a classic look to create a contemporary news presentation.
Our new headline font, Starling, is a 2009 revision of a typeface created in 1904 by yacht designer William Starling Burgess, before he became a partner of the Wright Brothers. A staple of newspaper design for more than a century, the updated version makes for an elegant yet simple foundation for the clean and uncluttered look we strove for and hope we’ve achieved.
The body copy is set in Miller, a typeface created in the late 1990s that makes for easy readability and recalls early 19th Century type.
We also have combined smaller sections of the newspaper into fewer but beefier ones. Our mission, as always, is to be the community’s leading source of local news, and that won’t change.
In reinvigorating the newspaper’s look, we sought the guidance of renowned publication designer Roger Black (Los Angeles Times, Esquire magazine, Rolling Stone, among many others), and he humored us by adding the Dispatch to his portfolio. The redesign team included coordinator Stephanie Woehrmann, Metro Newspapers’ design director Kara Brown and Executive Editor Dan Pulcrano. The Pony Express mascot was updated by artist Rik Olson and incorporated into our new front page logo.
We hope you like the new Gilroy Dispatch as much as we do and look forward to your comments and suggestions.
