The news at your fingertips

 

A platform that is truly innovative from Canada’s largest newspaper, Toronto Star Touch presented award-winning journalism with layers of rich multimedia content for tablet devices. 

During its year-and-a-half run, Toronto Star Touch delivered immersive and interactive consumption of news, sports, arts and entertainment, business, and life interest stories everyday for free. This medium allowed us to create a hands-on news experience, using rich media inspired by television motion graphics, and page layouts that provide familiarity for our print newspaper readers through the use of gestures and user interface guidelines used for tablet computing. Compared to media consumption on print and the web, the combination of touch and rich media resulted in improved reader experiences that translated to increased social media sharing and engagement with our advertisers. Our readers engaged with each story at their own pace, anytime during their day.

Under the tutelage of design director Fadi Yaacoub, an experienced editorial designer from CBC Radio Canada, the tablet department of the newsroom was an incubator for ideas that would help revolutionize and reinvigorate journalism for the Toronto Star.

Nominated, Best Presentation
Canadian Federal Elections Coverage, 2015 National Newspaper Awards

 

Reaching out to a new generation

 

For the 2015 Canadian Federal Elections coverage, we utilized a Dossier template to provide readers essential coverage of the three major candidates for Prime Minister. The iconic photo of Justin Trudeau and his mother Margaret is perfectly captured with embedded video for readers to relive the historic event, and commentary from some of the best political journalists in Canadian media.

Our target demographic were 25-45 year-old tablet readers — the political climate in Canada provided an opportunity for young voters to speak up like never before, therefore the art direction reflected a non-traditional approach to create a refreshing theme that invited our readers to collectively engage and share their thoughts on such a historic event.

Pre-production commenced two weeks before the elections, working around the clock to create templates and coordinate with designers, reporters, editors, producers, data visualization specialists, and photographers in the entire Toronto Star team to deliver a package that was unique and memorable for our readers immediately after all the votes were counted.

 

For a changing city

 

The Toronto Star is best known for local news coverage in the City of Toronto, and its surrounding suburbs and regions in Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe. The City is the newspaper’s bread and butter, and so we produced and designed engaging screens for stories from crime and justice, to urban renewal and transportation, with extensive use of statistics and maps, powerful photography, and multimedia to draw readers to the finer details of each story.

Stories such as the King Street Pilot Project, the expansion of the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area’s regional and local transportation systems, and the mayoralty of John Tory and City Hall affairs were extensively covered. Starting with 4pm meetings with art directors, producers, editors, and reporters, we produced concepts with quick iteration, leading to deadline that resulted in visually appealing screens that were widely shared on social media the next day. The tablet experience truly enhanced the diversity of these stories, from law and crime, to special interest and local events, that is currently unmatched with today’s web and print media consumption.

 

Watch a quick demo of Star Touch

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank everyone in the newsroom from the start to the end of Toronto Star Touch.

Design director: Fadi Yaacoub
Design manager: Paolo Zinatelli
Art directors: Taylor Shute, Danyal Fallah, Bradley Reinhardt and Adam Taylor
Designers: Mishelle Menzies, Jae Yang, Sara Plavsic, Henwick Yiu, Olusegun Adebajo, Michele Vincini, Boen Jiang, Aaron Berge, Marina Botter, David Schnitman, Shelly Jameer, Andy Kolenberg, Edward Chu, Lea Kaplan, Chi Deng, Anthony Capano, Sana Sheikh, Xuefei Ji, David Caterini, Janine Wong, Anya Bogatch, Derek Ma, Weiwei Sun, Tim Schjins, Sanjay Pinnock, Jen O’Dowd, Adam Oliver and Lisa Mancini

Digital Producers & Copy Editors: 
Frank Butty, David Washburn, Brian Liu, Sarah Del Giallo, George Achi, Allendria Brunjes, Scott Rennie, Sahar Fatima, Ed Tubb, Mark Teo, Chris Hanna, Andrea MacDonald, Robert Gibson, Andrew Bates, Tara Deschamps, David Kates, Eric Stober, Tanis Fowler, Mallika Viegas, Chelsea Maclachlan, Lina Toyoda, Marcel Vander Wier, Kelsey Wright, Daniel Bitonti, Tomas Hachard, Swati Bhatt Vyas, Robin Grant, Courtney Greenberg, Nicole Riva, Ali Zafar, Romi Levine, Jarrett Churchill, Stacey McLeod, Dawn Cuthbertson, Perry King and Kerri Breen.

Special thanks to the award-winning newsroom team: photographers, reporters, page editors from print, illustrators, the Guardians of the editions, and all the fine journalists of the past, present, and future of the Toronto Star.