Excuse me if this comes across as anal, but I just can’t like the Chicago Sun-Times current masthead, which debuted in June (along with a revamped design for the rest of the newspaper — which I am yet to see since I don’t touch newspapers these days).
It’s not that the masthead looks bad (it actually looks semi-nice), but it just doesn’t make sense.
I get that the formal name of the paper is the Chicago Sun-Times. The name that appears on the masthead would suggest that the formal name is Chicago Sun-Times.com, which it’s not.
I realize I’m over thinking this. But really, somebody at the Sun-Times should have been over thinking before this masthead was ever approved for use.
I fully understand the paper wants to emphasize the importance of their website, however, adding the .com to the logo is wrong. The Sun-Times markets its website simply as Suntimes.com — not as ChicagoSuntimes.com or ChicagoSun-Times.com (even though both URLs do technically forward you to the Suntimes.com URL).
I get it… the reader is supposed to understand that the paper is named the Chicago Sun-Times, and that there is a website, which the reader probably already understands is Suntimes.com. Still, that’s a lot of assumptions. Such lapse in judgement is something I would have expected in 1999 or 2000. Not in 2013.
It could have been worse. At least the masthead wasn’t written as www.Chicago Sun-Times.com.