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ColdType Magazine

editor@coldtype.net

COLDTYPE was launched eight years ago to counter a belief – which still continues – that the best way for newspapers to solve the problem of declining readership is to tinker with the design without too much thought to the quality – or quantity – of content. The result of this shortsightedness, as I pointed out in my first editor's note, "is the production of newspapers that are often bland and lifeless . . . and that is not good journalism. An attractive package is desirable, but we should pay as much - or more - attention to the grey stuff as we do to its packaging." 

Things haven’t changed much over the past eight years; in fact the speed of redesigns has heated up while circulations fall at a concurrent rate.

ColdType, revived after a hiatus of five years – it took nearly four years to persuade my former bosses at Thomson Newspapers to give me the title and another 15 months to decide what to do with it – will continue with its original mission: to reprint examples of excellent writing from around the world in a format that emphasises how a neat and unobtrusive design can enhance, without subsuming, the power of The Word.

That’s the mission, but the point is much simpler: Great writing should be available to as many people as possible – and preferably free of charge. Hence our new pdf format and internet distribution. I hope you find this new issue interesting, informative and amusing. If you do (or if you don’t), contact me at editor@coldtype.net. Your feedback is important.

TONY SUTTON, Editor

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