This week’s paper reflects a redesign of the Town Crier that has been months in the making and many years coming.

Our aim in reimagining the look of the Town Crier was to maintain our proud heritage as a news-heavy local source, while celebrating our artistic culture with a weekly “On the Town” section that stands on its own … literally. (See for yourself. You can pull it out of this newspaper.)

We lead with the top news stories, quickly followed by our opinion section. Next it’s on to the people and community events in our town. You’ll still find the crime report, “News of Record,” and the “Community Calendar,” just a little further back.

Clean and accessible
We chose fonts that are clean and easy to read. That same “clean and accessible” theme is carried throughout the paper’s design.

Stories of the highest importance are easier to spot, given prime placement in the paper and on each page they appear.

Your favorite columnists and features also will be easy to spot, once you’re used to seeing their “logos” (a throwback to Town Crier founder Ernie Maxwell’s style of marking each regular item with a graphic — usually hand-drawn — header).

Finding the local services you need also is easier now, with the “Idyllwild Service Directory” moved ahead of the “Classified” section, traditionally in the back of any newspaper.

Effective advertising
We’ve created new, modular display ad sizes for the newspaper that feature full color at no extra cost to the advertiser. They are designed to be more eye-catching and reader-friendly. We are moving away from ads that simply have a small presence in the paper to ads that pop and easily convey the advertiser’s intended message. We believe this will bring our advertisers better results.

Works well with the web
Many of us now read the headlines most important to us online; either at our computers, on a tablet device or on our smartphones. The Town Crier is proud to be one of the first California newspapers to go online in 1995, and we continue to improve our Internet presence and make the news easy for all to find.

Just as the print edition has changed, our online readers can expect an updated, more user-friendly website to launch very soon.

We will continue to utilize the immediacy of the Internet to bring you breaking news coverage as fast as we can. However, our priority is always on providing factual information, not rushing to be first.

Another advantage of the web is its limitlessness. We are constrained in print, but can expand our coverage online. Watch for more stories and photography that wouldn’t fit in the paper, but is posted on our website.

Social media continues to be a positive tool for disseminating the news. Online services are constantly changing and pushing to increase their bottom line. We do our best to use the tools available but understand the tidal nature of social media outlets. We will continue to ride those waves.

Our first priority being online is to maintain a user-friendly, up-to-date website that provides the best source there is for news and information about Idyllwild and the surrounding communities.

Be sure to bookmark us now! Watch for more tourist-oriented content on our new magazine website palmstopinesmagazine.com.

What do you think? Drop us a line sharing your thoughts on the new design at [email protected].