Newspaper Photo Front Pages

Every weekday, Newseum publishes its selection of "Ten top front pages of the day", based on different criteria. Today, Oct 6, the focus is on photography, and the selection is shown in the screen grab above.
__Are these really the best photos of the day, the best 826 newspapers worldwide can come up with? I seriously doubted it, and started to scroll through the pages from all the newspapers.
__There are a few that should have been included in the selection (shown below), but I'm genuinely surprised that the world has so little to offer in terms of front page photography. Are all the good photos inside the newspapers? Are they saved for the weekend editions, instead of being printed in a 'lousy' Tuesday edition? – or are there actually nothing worth showing in large scale on an average weekday? Makes you wonder.

My personal favourites

On the Newseum site, you scroll through thumbnails of the pages. So a front page photo must really have impact, to invite you to click on it to see the larger image. This one from red eye, Chicago, was the first to catch my attention – a strong, simple, full page close up portrait of a teen in trouble – a beat-up face. This cover – magazine-like – is actually the only one that really passes the thumbnail test.


My second favourite was the Philadelphia edition of Metro – showing a nice behind with a handwritten note across. But then again – I do have a weekness for lovely ladies' buttocks …


Third in line was this one from Portuguese Journal de Notícias – a large face which is actually a poster. Strong graphic impact with a human touch. And the human in the photo is actually so very small, you only notice him in the corner after a little while. I would have loved to see it even bigger – but of course, there must be room left for the headline.


Even in little old Denmark, we can use photos with impact on the cover – this one from Jyllands-Posten shows the Minister for Defense in a tight corner – which he is actually in, politically, at the moment.


At 24timer, we met a guy in the street with wax in his hair. His hairdo made it to the front page today, illustrating a story about how wax can actually give you allergies.


Público, of Spain, choses a different approach by showing only small promo box sized images, accompanying a large black box with white and yellow text. This is perhaps the exception to the rule, established by Mario García in his book 'pure design' – where he states that "a publication's front page must have strong visual impact, which 99 percent of the time depends on a good photograph". It sure did make me stop and look – and I did not even understand the words properly!


The best way to communicate on the cover of your publication, however, is not by making one element stand out. It is by making the different parts of your language speak together – as in this one, from Oshkosh Northwestern, with a very delicate tribute to The Artist Formerly Known As Prince. I really love this one – it's as beautiful as a woman's butt.