Redesign and Conquer

Redesign and Conquer

The Postredesign is coming, the Post redesign is coming! The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is changing its fonts and pie charts!

You say you don't care? Don't worry. Unreal cares enough for the rest of you.

So much, in fact, that when our town's Lee Enterprises affiliate invited readers downtown to critique the new look over lunch, we said, "You had us at 'free meal.'"

What a thrill to get our ink-stained hands on the new paper two weeks before everyone else! (We were a little crestfallen, though, when market-research analyst Jake Jones called to confirm our appointment and acted like he didn't know who we were.)

Our first impression of the prototype: No longer will the paper be "scary" for elementary-school kids and the autistic.

But we didn't say that out loud. Our hosts -- a few guys from marketing, some future Pulitzer Prize winners and editor Ellen Soeteber -- wanted constructivefeedback.

So we told 'em that although Deb Peterson looks hot in color, pink in the cheeks seems to add about five pounds to Bernie Miklasz.

Other invitees were less generous. "The word that came to mind for me was 'wimpy,'" said one woman. Another kept referring to Sylvester Brown Jr. as a "bottomer" because his column appears below the fold. Someone said her husband would be horrified that the weather had moved from metro to sports.

All the kvetching and kvelling made us tired. (Or maybe it was the turkey-and-Gouda sandwich.) But this week, in the Post's honor, we're running our column in their new style.