Sometimes it helps to be a tabloid. The Mirror's graphic front is much more powerful than the Telegraph's excellent page one, which uses a photograph from the same set and runs an unusual two-line banner splash head. 

Similarly, the Independent and Guardian share a different, less gruesome, picture, but it is more effective in the Independent, and even in the i, than in the Berliner format.

The Mail demonstrates the difference in the rules that apply to print - which has to attract casual readers and not upset those who have the paper delivered - and those that apply online.
The website's home page not only had the Iraqi execution pit, but also piles of bodies from Kenya and victims of atrocities in Afghanistan and Palestine. Not quite what people logging on for the sidebar of shame might be expecting at the top of the page.(It has now moved down.)
The mix on the Mail's home page as I write is incongruous, almost prurient - the McCanns upset about the adjournment of their Portuguese libel trial, followed by a teacher with cancer and Cheryl Cole's clothes immediately underneath, then a clutch of teasers for stories ranging from Michael Schumacher to a benefits cheat and a model who doesn't want to do community service.
Then comes the mass of bodies. 
An attempt is made to show the relative importance of the stories by the amount of space they are given, but the mix still jars.
And so it does in print: the sanctimonious headline about the "slaughter that shames Blair" underneath three-quarters of a page of pictures of Prince George. Has this strange marriage come about because of the desire to sell papers on the back of the footballing baby royal or the fear of frightening the readers with pictures of the dead and dying?

The only way these shock stories work is if you give the whole page to them, as the Mirror and Independent have. Ideally, the puff should also go because there is nothing that can sit alongside these sorts of stories and images without looking trite. 
And of course there is also the old question of should we print pictures of corpses? It seems that act of discretion has been abandoned. But if we want people to buy our papers, take them into their homes and encourage their children to become newspaper readers, then we should be thinking carefully about what we print and how we print it.

An old man looks out to sea. There's a stoop to his shoulders. His jacket misshapen from how many years of bits and bobs stuffed in the pocket. Somehow we know, even from the back, that he is in contemplative mood. Is he looking for his grandchildren? No, the clothes are too formal. The shoes aren't designed for a beach outing.
We know, of course, that Gordon Smith is in Normandy for the D-Day 70th anniversary commemorations. But the picture is full of possibilities - until we look at the inset picture showing the tearful face of a 90-year-old man remembering lost colleagues. 
The headline, picture and restrained text show the Mail at its best. 
This morning every paper but the Star found a home for the D-Day veterans on the front page. The Mail struck exactly the right tone. The Telegraph, too, showed dignity. It decided not to afford itself the luxury of the entire front page, but it kept the puffs simple  and gave its picture and text room to breathe.

The Independent was similarly restrained, while the i curtailed the standard front page puffery and abandoned the big white on black splash in the centre to produce a front that was far cleaner and more appealing than usual.

The first decision that had to be made was were you going to blow the entire front on the commemorations? Only the Mail answered that question with an unequivocal "Yes". 
Only the Star ignored the occasion altogether, preferring a more conventional style of beachwear for its cover. The  Sun and the Express both got in a right muddle as a direct result of the determination to incorporate the D-Day pictures in the usual puff-heavy Friday format. It was understandable with the Sun as it had a good exclusive that was followed up everywhere. There was no excuse for the Express. If you've read one migrants-rip-us-off splash, you've pretty well read them all. The pages are a mess and need tearing up and starting again.

Far more interesting, from SubScribe's point of view, are the Times, Guardian and Mirror. The Times reined back on its habitual exuberant Friday puff. There was no Caitlin Moran looking kooky through a pair of binoculars; the Bricks & Mortar promo is restrained. The Guardian stuck with its usual Friday fare, while the Mirror tried to cram too much onto the page by including a Farage story that didn't require a page one presence. Had he admitted any naughtiness with the woman who was the subject of yesterday's splash it would have been another matter. But he didn't. A righteous denial was what would have been expected and that was what we got. One to bury.
As former colleagues know to their exasperation and despair, SubScribe was a great one for tinkering with pages after they'd gone to press. And so today I've had a bit of fun cutting and pasting these three fronts . You may well think the originals are best...or maybe not...

If we get rid of  Mr Farage we have far more room to display the rather wonderful story of 89-year-old Jack Hutton parachuting into Normandy (albeit on a piggyback parachute) 70 years after he made the drop in the midst of war. If we move the modern pictures to the left and put a little space between them, the whole element becomes less crowded and there is room to get the feel of Mr Hutton in the great open skies. Or maybe we think that Farage was essential?

The Guardian chose to keep its multi-element puff in the usual position, so it ended up with five cutout figures immediately above a photograph of a collection of figures standing on the beach saluting a flypast of wartime aircraft. It's a pretty uninspiring picture, to be honest - especially given what else was around - but it is destroyed by that huge Jonah Hill in the puff.
How would it be if we got rid of the Klaxons pictures, and made Jonah and Gwynnie smaller? If we also lose the blue bubbles it all becomes calmer. Finally, if we put the whole shebang on top of the titlepiece, there is nothing to interfere with the main picture. Or maybe we think it's right that the veterans salute Jonah Hill?

The Times's Bricks & Mortar blurb is modest by usual Friday standards, but is that interior picture on the right part of the puff or part of the column five story? If we move the whole caboodle above the titlepiece it becomes clearer and the bottom of the puff doesn't meld into the main picture. 
But why stop there? The Times is a tabloid (sorry, compact), the whole paper goes on display at the newsagent's, so who says the puff needs to be at the top? A curtailed version at the bottom gives the page more of an air of solemnity, telling the reader that this is something out of the ordinary, while still selling the property supplement. And if we wanted to balance the page, we could move the main picture across a column.

All of which proves three things:
1: there are many ways to skin a cat
2: that it's vital to think of what the rest of the front is saying when designing a puff
3: you are never too old for a session of cutting and sticking.
Happy weekend

Wednesday 4 June, 2014  It's enough to make any republican choke on their breakfasts: the Queen's taxi to Parliament this morning has diamond and sapphire encrusted door handles and more gold leaf than a playboy's seduction suite. It is also a cut-and-paste job that may make it more acceptable in this age of austerity. The coach was built by an Australian who, having been given a bit of Nelson's Victory, scrounged scraps of British history from all over the place. Here's a bit of Scott's Antarctic sled, there's a bit of a Lancaster bomber, ooh look, a bit of Newton's apple tree and a rivet from the Flying Scotsman. But you can't build something like this out of slivers of wood from an array of centuries, the truth is it must have cost a bomb. Some have put a price of £3m on it. What is worth noting, though, is that it has been paid for by the Royal Collection, using private donations. 
Its opulence may be eye-wateringly inappropriate, but it's the first new state coach for 100 years, and heritage and pageantry are essential aspects of our tourist industry. How inappropriate would it be, for example, to spend £3m on the Tower of London, Edinburgh Castle, the Palace of Westminster?
But that doesn't excuse the diamond and sapphire handles.

 With the 70th anniversary of D-Day just down the road,  remembrance, reminiscence and retrospectives are to be found on every corner. The Guardian has given its Eye Witness centre spread to a collection of montage photographs, melding the old and new both taken from the same spot. It's a technique that has become popular through a combination of  photographic software technology and our willingness to view and share pictures, personal and public, on screen. The picture on the left of Omaha beach - otherwise known as Colleville-sur-Mer - is as it appears in print. The website, however, allows visitors to see the ancient and modern pictures individually, as shown on the right, fading from one to the other and creating an even better sense of time and space. It is poignant and chastening to think of so many young men risking their lives to give us the freedom to read about Katie Price. The modern photographs were taken by Peter Macdiarmid of Getty Images, who has also collected modern images of scenes recorded in First World War photographs and put the two together. For more of this sort of work, see also Blitz Ghosts by Nick J. Stone, which shows Norwich past and present.

This blog is generally intended to hail interesting use of pictures and well-designed spreads, but sometimes a photograph brings the reader up short for the wrong reason.
Charlize Theron turns up out of the blue on page 15 of today's Times. Why? Because she is beautiful I guess. The caption offers no justification; in case it isn't clear in the cutting above, here it is in full:
'Lighter side Interviewed in Esquire magazine, Charlize Theron says she is not at all like the “dark people” she plays on screen'
It is customary for high-end magazines to demand that newspapers use their covers alongside any newsworthy pictures, hence the baby Esquire on the actress's shoulder.
But how much puffery is required to secure access to a studio shot such as this? Besides the inset cover, the magazine's name appears in the caption and in Terry Richardson's picture credit.
It is a striking photograph, but it belongs in the glossy mag for which it was intended, not disguised as news.

Ah, but what's this? Looking back through the cuttings file, SubScribe discovers that the light-and-dark Ms Theron has a new film out. For here she is in the Times ten days ago, when the accompanying caption told us: 
'A star rises in the West The South African star Charlize Theron at the world premiere of her film A Million Ways To Die In The West, at Westwood, California'
This time she's looking over her other shoulder - so at least it is balanced coverage.

The Times is keen on pictures from the arts, particularly if they involve women. A pink hairdo is all that's needed to get in. Even nipples seem to be allowed if they are artistic enough, judging from a nude Drew Barrymore and some painted women contorted into a skull shape.  Pop concerts, shows, films, exhibitions and opera are all fair game, but SubScribe suspects that John Witherow's passion is for dance. Barely a day passes without a ballerina or two leaping across the page - today we had ballet on page 5 and Chinese dance on 32. 
Here's a far from comprehensive selection of stand-alone arts pictures from the past couple of weeks - including one from the Glyndebourne Der Rosenkavalier, cross-reffing to the review in T2 in which Richard Morrison dismissed Tara Erraught as "unbelievable, unsightly and unappealing". Needless to say, the photograph is not of Ms E.

Most of these pictures are vibrant and attractive, but as SubScribe has written in the past, if papers are going to use stand-alone images, they should give the sub room  to craft some words to give the picture some point. Otherwise they are just space-fillers, puffs or eye-candy. The Mail is the master of this game, investing in researchers who can create something special out of the most mundane shots. The Mirror also showed what could be done last week with its Johnny Depp picture, as you can see here.
The Times has shown some exceptional picture editing in the past few months, but the ballet is being overdone. There are rather a lot of cute animals too - but who's going to object to those? Here's a sample:

There are also, it must be said, some dramatic wildlife pictures in the collection that certainly don't qualify as cute.
And finally, an example today of departments failing to talk to each other. The bank holiday girl in Worthing who appears on page four, below, could easily be looking across to the family on the beach 39 miles away in Southsea - or 29 pages away in business.

 This is Yorkshire's Busy Bee, guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.
Jean Bishop is 93 and she has been dressing up as a bee since her husband died 14 years ago,  to raise money for Hull Age UK. 
Last year she was named Fundraiser of the Year at the Daily Mirror's Pride of Britain awards, and celebrities rallied round on the night to raise £9,000 so that she reached her goal of collecting £100,000.
Today she is in the Independent on Sunday's Happy List, an antidote to the Rich List which celebrates a hundred people who enrich others' lives rather than their own. Others featured include the Teenage Cancer Trust fundraiser Stephen Sutton, who died ten days ago, and "the world's oldest barmaid". Dolly Saville, 100, who has worked at the Red Lion in Wendover for 75 years.

Friday 23 May, 2014 A cute piece of work here from someone at the Mirror, likening Johnny Depp - in character as a murderous mobster - to his former girlfriend Kate Moss. 
There are nits to pick: the heading, the fussiness of the design, the lame quote at the end, even the fact that it's 16 years since Depp and Moss were a couple. It is also, of course, complete nonsense.
But none of that matters because somebody has thought "Hey, you know who he looks like..." and then found not only a photograph of Moss with sunglasses and hair pulled back, but also a picture of the couple together where she is also sporting the Croydon facelift. Good work. Really good work.

Tuesday 20 May, 2014 Tulips among the chrysanths make a pleasant change from Her Majesty among the roses and Titchmarsh among the lilies for the opening day of the Chelsea Flower Show. 
This photograph by Dan Kitwood made the front page of the Independent - under the cute heading "Full petal jacket" - and page three of the Times. Sadly both papers used the photographer's less-than-helpful caption "An exhibitor looks at a stand of chrysanthemums".
Here we have an interesting chap in a blue suit covered in tulips, earrings and an unusual hairstyle (shame about the positioning of his arms, but you can't have everything). 
What a pity he is unidentified or, if it was impossible to find out who he was, that a little more imagination was not put into use. The picture editor did his or her job by plucking this from the endless celebs and arty blooms, the subs should have done their bit.
Elsewhere, the Telegraph stuck with the familiar line-up, with the Queen on the front and Titchmarsh inside - where was Joanna Lumley? The Express also went for the comfortable, while the Mail gave Amy Willerton the publicity she craved by making her 'birth of Venus' interpretation its main Chelsea photograph. The Guardian paired its front-page Chelsea Pensioners with an entirely horticultural centre spread, below. Not a royal in sight.
Now let's hope for something beyond the giant walking plant when the show closes on Friday.

A very powerful picture on the Times centre pages yesterday of a father clutching his son after he escaped from the Turkish mine gas blast. This was the opening foreign spread and, apart from this picture, it lacked its usual panache. SubScribe wonders why seven dead in Ukraine - a story that has been running for months - outranks 150 dead in a mining disaster that has left hundreds trapped underground hoping for rescue.
Other papers caught up with the picture today...and the Times reassessed its news values...

The Duke of Cambridge hosted a dinner for 200 stars of the arts and fashion world last night to honour the designer Ralph Lauren and raise funds for the Royal Marsden hospital. 
The gravel drive leading up to Windsor Castle served as the red carpet, with guests pausing to pose for the photographers. Those attending included Kate Moss, Helena Bonham Carter, Benedict Cumberbatch and Cate Blanchett, but the papers' choice was Emma Watson. 
Here's how they treated three similar photographs