Editor’s Note: All opinion section content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board.

The choice to pick up and read a print newspaper in 2026 is one that is not often made. There are many reasons to keep walking past the newsstands, but there’s only one reason to choose to stop: because you value and trust local independent journalism.

At The Collegian, we believe we should cherish that choice and deliver you a product that reflects the importance of that decision back onto you, so we’ve decided to debut a new design for our paper.

My name is Alli Adams. I will be stepping into the role of design director here at The Collegian for the next year. This summer, I spearheaded the redesign of The Collegian’s print newspaper. After hours of conversation, research and experimentation, we decided the most important and impactful choice we can make with our design is to reflect back at you the intelligence and thoughtfulness that informed your decision to pick up our paper.

There has been a noticeable shift in my generation — a new countermovement that we are on the brink of entering: the desire to own physical media.

This generation has solely grown up in the era of the internet and social media, yet physical books are making a comeback, CD sales are surging and video stores are reporting increased patronage and sales. As a provider of a product of physical media ourselves, we had to ask ourselves: Why?

These choices are not made in a vacuum. Rather, they are often made in direct negation to the predatory practices of social media companies and their algorithms. I mean, who can blame them? PlayStation removed physical disks altogether, Spotify’s costs — both financially and morally — just keep skyrocketing and streaming services like HBO Max are simultaneously purging beloved content and pursuing potentially dangerous mergers. 

The prevailing attitude across much of Gen Z is everything requires a subscription and whatever doesn’t is selling your data or recruiting influencers to try and make you forget about their moral shortcomings. Choosing physical media means choosing to have agency over your own tastes.

So when I was tasked with this redesign, it became clear it is our responsibility to provide this countermovement the opportunity to feel heard. I want this print paper to be the vinyl of CSU; I want it to be the choice that people make to feel grounded in their community; and, above all, I want our readers to see we respect the intelligence and care that led them to that choice. 

I could bore you with technical reasons as to why the paper changed: costs, page cuts, ad placements, picas and columns, or I could tell you what interested me the most: creating a paper that feels like a paper. Something you’d see wrapping a fish, in a barber’s waiting room or on the porch of a suburban family. Something that could sit on the same shelf as The New York Times, The Coloradoan or The Boston Globe, and not one person would think twice about it.

To me, a person choosing to read a physical newspaper is akin to the choice of buying a physical book. The content matters, but so does the physical aesthetic. The pages, the smell, the touch and social statement you make are all bound together in one product. There is a defined look to it; otherwise, people wouldn’t be posting their latest reads with their lattes on Instagram. As a student of design and the head of The Collegian’s design team, chasing this phenomenon like a bloodhound, breaking it down to understand it and seeing how far I can run with what I find is my job. Much like a book, I wanted to create a place for bored eyes on campus to land on — something to skim outside of one’s phone, all while expressing oneself in the process.

This is seen through the smallest of changes: the serif font I chose was specifically designed to elicit nostalgia for the grander days of print journalism while still remaining relevant to the contemporary reader; the pages are now arranged to pack text as tight as we can so we can focus on delivering high-quality content instead of on cutting important articles; and our page numbers were made larger to increase accessibility and help our readers get to the stories they care about. These choices were made to give The Collegian a new, professional look that subtly communicates that we value your time and intelligence.

For our readers walking past our newsstands every week, there is one large change that will be the most immediately obvious: our front cover.

For the past decade, The Collegian’s front cover has become increasingly focused on its visual appeal. We’ve made some truly amazing covers over the past years, and our editorial staff is beyond grateful to have been given the ability to display the skills of our photographers, illustrators and page designers in the way we have.

This year, however, after analyzing both our successes and our failures with our print paper, we’ve decided to debut a new cover design — one that harkens back to our history and shows we’re investing in our future. Something that screens couldn’t encapsulate. I wanted to bring the iconic image of newspapers back. Every week, our front cover will now feature the best and most relevant stories of that week in a format that is visually compelling, respectful of our reader’s time and reminds people of an institution they feel they can trust.

So as you skim through the next few editions and glance over the headlines in the future, I want to thank you. Every page is created with the intent to create a look a reader would want to indulge in, but it would mean nothing if I had no audience to design for. I hope you enjoy the redesign, not only for the content and news, but also for the feeling it gives you while reading, the smell of cooled ink and the way it looks in an Alley Cat booth.

Reach Alli Adams at visuals@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegian.