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Every morning a Gulf News reader opens his or her front door and finds a copy of the newspaper - glossy and rich with colours, ready to be experienced.
A newspaper is about superior content and design. But, it is also about printing quality, vibrant colours and well-defined images - a good newspaper offers award-winning production standards to its readers.
A reality that Gulf News accepted a long time ago and has worked hard to deliver consistently.
This year the newspaper was awarded the Best Print Award for Asia (Ifra) for outstanding print quality in newspaper production and nominated for 2008 as one of the top 50 Ifra International Newspaper Colour Quality Club members, which is a global quality benchmarking competition.
It is worth casting your mind to the simple reasoning that an individual may be an extremely talented artist but without a good canvas for him or her to work on, there would be no way for the art to reach its audience. The message would be diluted or lose impact. The same holds true for newspaper printing and publishing.
Dean du Toit, Senior Production Manager at Gulf News, said: "The Quality Club membership is very prestigious. It is recognition of international calibre - a milestone for the newspaper. There were 198 global participants this year."
Ifra, the global research and service organisation for the news publishing industry was founded in 1961, at a time when European publishers began to introduce the use of colour in newspapers. It then developed into a global body with over 2000 members in 60 countries.
Complete experience
It also broadened its focus dramatically and currently deals with all issues related to the production of newspapers and to new media as well as design.
There are few things more disappointing to a reader than a washed out photograph and poor print quality for a great report. A superior newspaper is a complete experience.
du Toit said: "The Quality membership is an acknowledgment of the overall print excellence of a product. It clearly conveys to the reader that what they receive on their doorstep every morning is a newspaper that meets award-winning global standards every day."
Newspapers wishing to use this competition to assess their printing and reproduction quality on an international scale are obliged to print a series of specially prepared test pages over a sustained period of time.
In the case of Gulf News as it follows a semi-commercial printing process, the situation becomes much more complex, as it involves working two systems together. The probability of something going wrong is much higher, making the challenge tougher.
He said: "The selection criteria are extremely difficult. It is an achievement that would be the envy of any newspaper. We are the first in the Middle East to achieve the membership of the Quality Club."
While making a mark on the global level, Gulf News scooped an additional three awards in the Ifra Asia sector.
It is the only newspaper from the Middle East to be one of the top three in the Best Print category this year. Gulf News also won the gold in the Best in Newspaper Front Page category, along with silver in the Best in Special Coverage division.
Benchmark
Both the awards were for the newspaper's special package to mark the fourth anniversary of Iraq's invasion, published on March 20, 2007.
Senior Gulf News designer S.M. Arshad, who has been part of the newspaper for five years, made the pages. He said: "Gulf News has always set the benchmark. Our competitors are doing well but we are far ahead of the rest. The newspaper has worked hard to achieve a unique design identity, which makes it instantly recognisable to the reader."
Design Director Miguel Angel Gomez added that this would not be possible if it were not for team effort.
He said: "We won the two top design awards at Ifra Asia because what we presented in those pages was well-defined, focused and reflective of people's emotions. It was an empathetic connection with our readers.
"Good design is about connecting to people. In this case, the headline, content and design all came together in perfect harmony to achieve that. Everything on the page worked as a team because it was a well-planned, collective effort."
Background
The story of the pages
--"We were designing a page to mark the fourth anniversary of Iraq's invasion. It is a subject that has a high emotional and political connection for our readers."
--"I wanted to convey the bloodshed that had been caused - all for one man Saddam Hussain - in as sensitive a manner as possible.
--"The idea of an entire page showing the ground saturated with the blood of those killed in the conflict came to mind. And to convey that all of this carnage was caused for one man, I placed a postage stamp-sized photograph of him on the page.
--"Design Director Miguel A. Gomez approved the idea. But, for me to have a page that truly made an impact, it would need statistics. I did some research and got the help of the GCC and Middle East Editor Jumana Al Tamimi."
--"Deputy Managing Editor Tom Clifford gave me the headline 'War of Error', which worked well."
--"Finally, when it was shown to the Editor-in-Chief Abdul Hamid Ahmad, he took the decision to turn it into the cover page and add an additional two pages of content with a linked design theme, which we did. And this got us the awards."
--"For me, as a designer it is a moment of truth and a moment of honour that I will cherish forever."
S.M. Arshad, Senior Designer, Gulf News
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