Last April, The Society for News Design released its 28th annual list of the “Worlds Best Designed Newspapers”. Of the top four contenders, none were American papers. This struck me as odd, but it also disappointed me. I, like many Americans, often believe that all things American must be the best. Yet I was proven very wrong. The winning paper was Aripaev from Tallinn, Estonia. In second, third, and fourth place, respectively, were El Economista of Madrid, Spain, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung of Frankfurt, Germany, and Politiken of Copenhagen, Denmark.

I was surprised that an American paper did not make the top 4 just due to sheer ability. Don’t we have the some of the world’s best technology and education? Even if we didn’t have the talent, I would think that the software and technology we have would allow us to design better newspapers than Estonia!

I guess this was a real eye opener. What do you think? What are these countries doing (or what do they know) that we don’t? In looking through some of their covers, there does seem to be an element of “clean” that is rarely found in American papers. Perhaps we have yet to learn that less is more?