The Daily Universe is getting a facelift.

But whether readers will be able to pick out the print results of 9 months of behind-the-scenes work is up for debate.

"Most people, when they see the redesigned paper the first day, are going to know something is different, but they won't be able to articulate what it is," said Phillip Ritzenberg, the designer from New York who engineered the redesign. "That's the first level. On the second level, they'll know it looks cleaner."

A few changes will be more noticeable than others.

The scripture of the day will be moved to the new, more reader-friendly opinion page, re-christened "Issues and Ideas." Less noticeably, there will be drop caps on columns and features.

When Ritzenberg approached the old format, he saw several elements that needed to be changed.

"Why are there all these little stories on pages 1 and 2?" he asked. "In the new layout there will be a brand new page 2 - international and national news all in one place, easy to find."

Ritzenberg said that in the redesign he did what only the outside person can do - ask, "Why not this way?"

The staff at NewsNet is generally excited about the revamped product.

"Change is always scary," said The Daily Universe's editor-in-chief, Andrea Ludlow, 21, a senior from Santee, Calif., majoring in print journalism. "But the more I saw the more excited I got. I wasn't too involved in the planning, but I did have the opportunity to look at some of the preliminary designs over the summer. I've been impressed each time I've seen the proposals."

Others are also looking forward to the change.

"It's good for a newspaper to get a facelift once in a while, and it compliments what we've done in the interior of the paper, which is the reorganization of the newsroom," said Newsnet Managing Director Robb Hicken.

The redesign will make the paper more reader-friendly and will make the text more approachable - both very desirable qualities in a newspaper.

Ritzenberg said that readers' approach to a paper necessitates a good package.

"The first thing people look at is the pictures, the next thing they look at is the headline," Ritzneberg noted. "We're lucky if they read half the story. This is a harsh reality, and it's been documented."

A man with almost 50 years of experience in journalism, Ritzenberg served as assistant managing editor of the New York Daily News for 15 years and was one of the founders of the Society of Newspaper Design. He shared his design wisdom with the staff of the Daily Universe in a seminar.

"Major newspapers don't redesign often enough. Nothing works forever. Papers usually wait until the paper has outgrown the design," Ritzenberg said.

Some newspapers are more innovative.

"Papers like USA Today really grabbed the newspaper industry by the lapels and shook it," Ritzenberg said, citing the reader-friendly paper as a leader in news design.

He said that papers that don't pay attention to design aren't such good newspapers.

"It takes recognition on the part of publishers that the product needs improving," Ritzenberg said.

College papers, as well as city newspapers, need to pay attention to design, Ritzenberg said.

"The mission's the same: To communicate with a community - inform a community. A college is not a whole lot different from a small city. A college paper needs to be committed to quality so students turned out of the university understand quality. Almost anyone can recognize craftsmanship. That is important, because sloppiness in designing the page is suggestive of other types of sloppiness."

Ritzenberg emphasized, however, that merely having a better paper design wouldn't increase the quality of the journalism.

"We have to know the secret word about newspaper design," Ritzenberg said. "The secret word is journalism. Everything we do is about enhancing words. I don't want to suggest that by prettifying the paper we'll create a better paper - because we won't - but we'll be dealing with other elements: better photo journalism, better headlines, and so on."

NewsNet General Manager Jim Kelly said he sees the redesign as representative of a more integrated movement at The Daily Universe.

"This is not a one-shot approach for us," he said. "I don't look at the redesign as an isolated event. I look at it more as an evolutionary process. ... What we're hoping to do is raise the bar on visual literacy on the communications side of the Department of Fine Arts and Communications."