A Genre Perspective on OnlineNewspaper FrontPage Design

Taking a genre perspective on design, this article proposes eight design recommendations for online newspapers. These recommendations are based on features that mediate a specific purpose and use between publisher and audience, which we describe as genre rules in terms of purpose, form, and positioning. They are also based on genre change regarding design, and the heritage from print regarding form and shared content elements. We have a) studied genre change through a web page analysis of nine Swedish online newspapers in 2001 and 2003, using the genre concepts content, form, functionality and positioning, and b) derived genre rules through publishers and audience understanding of the genre. We have interviewed managers, designers and editors-in-chief at the nine newspapers as well as 153 members of their audience. We show that in the design process for digital documents, it is useful to have genre awareness, i.e. to be aware of the genre characteristics, the producer's design purpose and the audience recognition and response.