Critics Find a Target in the Circles of USA Today\'s Redesign

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY and DAVID CARR

The day after USA Today unveiled its new edition, the design community was in a fluster about the newspaper's new look and puzzled by the bold circles that appear in the top, left-hand corner of every section.

“It's a mess,” said Steven Heller, the co-chairman of the M.F.A. design program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. “It's a mélange of a lot of things that forces the eyes to cross rather than focus on any one thing.”

But he gave USA Today credit for trying something new.

“It could be the last gasp of what is a newspaper, or it could be the beginning of what is the next stage of newspapers,” said Mr. Heller, who writes the Visuals column for The New York Times Book Review. “I give them a little credit more than not for trying this out.”

Roger Black, an art director who worked on the original design of USA Today's Web site, said he missed the news paper's old typeface, and called the circles in the corner of each section “a little odd” and reminiscent of the Japanese flag.

Memos coming out of Gannett, which owns USA Today, drew more attention to the circle, or ball, with phrasing that will no doubt be highlighted and parsed in social-media realms.

In a note to employees that was published by Jim Romenesko, the chief marketing officer of Gannett, Maryam Banikarim, shared a memo from Sam Ward, the artist and illustrator at USA Today who was behind the ball-centric redesign.

“Just what are our balls?,” he wrote. “Well, they are what we will make of them. I believe our balls are symbols of who we are and where we're headed. Sure, our competitors will laugh. Let them laugh so hard that they cannot breathe.”