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Consultations with international layout guru, Peter Ong from Australia, began the process of aligning Sondag's layout with its content. The younger, fresher and more contemporary layout is a move away from South Africa's traditional tendency to follow the format of an English tabloid with its inward-focused, ratty and often vicious temperament.

Ong suggested that Sondag look towards emerging trends from a country with a climate and sunny disposition more like that of South Africa, combined with forward thinking design.

Changes include a new layout that aims to be “clean, fresh and contemporary”. The newspaper will consist of approximately 64 pages every Sunday and was designed by Tip Publishing - a company with more than 30 years of South African journalist experience. The articles have a big emphasis on colour and larger graphics.

“The section editors are top class, from all walks of life, and have truly lived and experienced all that life has to offer,” says Pretorius.

A major differentiating factor says the team behind Sondag, is that it “offers news no other Sunday newspaper will publish: a far cry from the gruesome, crime intensive read you will find elsewhere, Sondag provides all the news you want, but in a way that you want to read it on a Sunday morning. It is all positive and light-hearted, with a new and fresh angle, peppered with pictures that you won't find in any other newspaper,” they claim.

Launched a year ago, research showed a gap in the Afrikaans market for a lighter, more entertaining Sunday newspaper to compliment the offerings of Media24's Rapport. A year later Sondag boasts an LSM 7-10, well educated and affluent readership.

[29 Sep 2008 08:28]

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