Two big news days this week (deaths of James Brown and Gerald Ford) seem to have exhausted the creativity of many front page designers. Most front pages were pretty lackluster today.

A handful of papers went big with James Brown at the Apollo, including this over-the-top front page from the Hartford Courant, which showed little regard for above-the-fold presentation to promote single-copy sales.

Today's standout is The Denver Post with their coverage of yet another storm, following up and improving upon their BFD from December 22.

Once again they had a strong headline and strong lead image – this time a map showing the scale of the storm. It's safe to assume that Coloradoans have seen enough snowdrift photos. The storm photo gives them a view of their world they can't get with the naked eye.

The rest of the page is clean, simple and straight-forward. Beneath the main headline, keywords in color lead off short headlines paired with photos that reinforce their meaning. These blue keywords match the blue of the heaviest precipitation in the map photo.

The only unrelated image is that of Saddam Hussein, which was carefully buffered with bodytype to separate it from the storm images. Hussein's photo is small, but has sufficient image size to be effective.

Room for improvement: The refer to storm updates at denverpost.com above the nameplate seems a bit separate from the rest of the storm coverage. It may have been more logical to place it beneath the nameplate and above the main head because it is related content.



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