A scan of The New York Times from October 14th, 1998.
Original print copyright The New York Times. Scan found at http://large.stanford.edu/prizes/nobel/news/nyt/images/nyt1big.jpg

Newspapers (at least when they aren’t digital) typically feature large amounts of text on their front cover, and The New York Times is especially known for its text-focus and long articles. A newspaper like the Times often finds ways to include a large amount of information while keeping it organized and visually appealing.

A large image sits on the left side of the cover – this serves as a large point, and is the place where my eye is drawn to first. Its placement on the left side of the page likely comes from a consideration that readers will naturally look at the cover from left to right; by placing the image on the left side, they’ve ensured that someone who even glances at the cover will more than likely see the image.

The typographic logo at the top also serves as a point, but a full-page horizontal line keeps the logo and other non-news information such as the copyright information and the edition separate from everything else. This line separates this information so thoroughly from the rest of the cover that it creates a plane for the information, giving it a notable height and width.

Articles are separated from each other through the use of lines, as well. Each article begins with a bold headline with varying fonts used; these all serve as points that lead the viewer to the beginning of each article. All articles are given their own planes, as well. The Times seems to utilize a hard edge design to its fields of text, preferring to split words in two and use hyphens to complete them on the next line than to have non-uniform line lengths.

All of these design decisions serve to give The New York Times a look that tries to balance between being eye-catching (at least by 1998 standards) and sophisticated; while it uses two large photos and some large headlines, it also places a large amount of information even on the front cover, a strategy that the Times may be employing to suggest that it’s more informative or more thorough than other competing newspapers.