The changing face of SN&R

April 20, 1989

Selling Sacramento

The very first SN&R cover—a wonderful collage by Jamie Hogan and a great way to introduce a new alternative voice to the city. It featured the same News & Review logo and format as our sister paper in Chico, and a black teaser bar at the bottom.

May 7, 1998

Flatland

The inaugural cover of SN&R’s first major redesign, undertaken by myself and local design guru Bob Dahlquist. It featured a newly redrawn logo, with “Sacramento” in a color that changed each week, matching the cover art. It also had teaser headlines and an inset photo in the lower corners, overlapping the main image.

January 28, 1999

Sacramento Money Guide

We dump the teaser text in thecorner and move the logo downto make room for two skyboxes.

April 27, 2000

Taking it to the bank

The red, black and white SN&R icon (designed by Bob) that had been used in promotions since the ‘98 redesign replaces the old-style logo, and we lose a skybox. Not only did it give the paper a more modern look, it was much more Internet-friendly as well. What we didn’t fully realize at the time was that we were effectively changing the name of the paper. A new generation of readers started referring to us only by our abbreviation.

April 28, 2005

Star in a jar

In the most drastic change to the cover in 16 years, we give up the full-cover single image in favor of a right-side vertical strip featuring five additional story teasers. The icon grows in size by about 20 percent to emphasize the brand image. The teaser strip is controversial with some readers who call it “trashy” and “tabloidish.” But when a longtime staff member reported, “I had no idea we had so many stories in the paper!” I decided it was working perfectly.

September 27, 2007

MultiSactual (Best of Sacramento 2007)

Our first ever glossy-cover, staple-bound issue made us (and our readers) wish we had the budget to print the paper this way every week. It featured a great photo by Jeremy Sykes, with art direction and lively magazine-style typography design by David Jayne.