We form habits—quite early in life—of reading certain daily newspapers. We can get surprisingly accustomed to a particular paper. It’s size, format, style of writing, headlines, comic-strips, puzzles, editorials, sports, business and film sections, all become part of our daily routine. Over time, these aspects get hard-coded in us. They are like old familiar friends; you expect to find them in the same place and form every day. I've tried to make a list of things that really hurt when you try to move to another paper - even one with better news reporting. Here's the list.

Format and layout: Print newspapers follow and S or Z pattern in laying out their articles. What this implies is that the reader browses the front page in the S or Z shaped pattern. If you read the Times of India, your eyes probably rest on the main article, then move to the secondary one to its right, then down, diagonally to the bottom of the page, where clusters of smaller articles live. There, you have your Z. It’s a very subtle movement, and we remain unaware of it. If you’re used to the Z format papers, landing on an S front page can leave you feeling you've been led astray. If you’re used to finding your editorial at a certain spot, you won’t enjoy hunting through the paper to find it elsewhere.

For the same reason, online news websites will rarely make a radical design change overnight. They will probably ease you into it by slowly and subtly.

Some online news sites do break convention, and very successfully too, such as newsmap.

Style: Every paper has its own style of writing articles. Length of sentences, use of active/passive voice and general tone can differ greatly. It’s sometimes surprisingly easy to see which newspaper has a more aggressive stance, which are hopelessly diplomatic, and where each one leans politically.

Typeface: We get very accustomed to certain typefaces. Just as human beings are made in a variety of personalities and characters, words appear in a variety of typefaces. We adore some, get along others, tolerate several, and abhor a few, depending on our own personalities, background, intellectual and aesthetic sensibilities.  After years of reading one paper, it can take a while to digest anything else, simply because the fonts may be different. 

Unsubscribe from your daily paper, and it can take several weeks of feeling lost without it, before you adjust to online news. Online news is freely available, but many of us still need our daily fix of a newspaper in print, with its delicious inky smell.

Have you played the game 20 Questions? There is an organizer/scorer who prepares slips (chits) of paper with names of famous personalities on it. There can be any number of teams – two people (A and B) in each team. The rules are simple – Person A picks up a chit and notes the name. Person B asks questions to try and guess the name on the chit; he or she can ask up to 20 questions. There can be only two possible answers – Yes or No. For example, A has picked up a chit. Now try guessing this person as B rattles questions.

Q 1: Is the person alive?
A: No
Q 2: Male?
A: Yes
Q 3: European?
A: No.
Q 4: American?
A: No
Q 5: Indian?
A: Yes
Q 6: Fine arts?
A: No
Q 7: Sports?
A: No
Q 8: Politics?
A: Yes
Q 9: Rajiv Gandhi
A: No
Q 10: Recent politics?
A: No
Q 11: Last decade?
A: No
Q 12: A king or something?
A: No
Q 13: Freedom struggle?
A: Yes
Q 14: Gandhiji?
A: Yes!!!

The game can be a good test of your general knowledge and with the clock ticking, can test your ability to ask sensible questions in the first place!

A friend and I decided to take part in such a competition during an inter-college/university event. There must have been about 50-60 teams, so there was an elimination round to get the number of teams down to 7 in the finals. We were intimidated – at best, we had played these games with friends at parties or within our college – this was a virtual mela! We decided to go ahead anyway.  To decide the order of play, each team had to pick a chit with a number on it. We picked ours – it was number 1. Did I hear anyone say, Murphy’s Law? We next learnt that the organizers were some chaps from IIT Bombay. What luck! The rules of the game were slightly different. The chits could be names of famous personalities or of famous places. Okay, no big deal there. And, while asking questions, the two teammates had to sit back to back – no eye contact permitted. Phew!

I picked a chit that read, “Gondwanaland”. My mind was in a tizzy – all those geography lessons from school about Pangaea breaking up to form Laurasia and Gondwanaland how-many-ever-million years ago came back to me in a flash. The maps of these landmasses danced before my eyes. I managed to give a totally helpless look to my teammate before I took my seat. And in front of a few hundred people, it was game over for us in less than 5 seconds!

But merely participating in this event and other such events was a learning experience. Just being part of these energized, enthusiastic bunches of people was rewarding in its own way. We got a pulse of things, got interested in new things, and started reading up on topics we never paid attention to earlier. Slowly, very slowly, we started winning some consolation prizes and then, ever so slowly, we started breaking into the top three slots. But perhaps, the most important thing was that we started to have opinions on issues. We were more in touch with current affairs and quite simply, it helped us become well-rounded individuals (pun intended).  

Cut to the present day. We sent an entry to the D&AD Professional Awards. These awards are open to creative work done for commercial purposes to companies and freelancers worldwide. Last year, D&AD Awards received entries from 67 countries across 24 disciplines of creative work. Ours may be one among thousands of entries and we may not win anything at all. But the learning has already started. Just seeing the creative work that was sent in the past years, the categories that awards are given in, deciding which category we should enter, reading about the judges who will serve in this year’s juries – every single thing has been enriching. Truly, being part of the excitement and merely participating can be such a winning experience.