My friend Eric Georgi called me this morning with an idea: Making a giant collage out of the front pages of every newspaper in the U.S. to honor Obama’s victory. I immediately joined the cause for finding the country’s newspapers. The New York Times was sold out everywhere in New York City and friends in Seattle, Chicago and Washington D.C. told me that the leading newspapers in their cities were sold out as well. Perhaps Obama’s win will mark a historic come back for print publications. We finally resorted to our massive Facebook network and asked friends in various states to mail us copies of their newspapers. I then started doing some research on newspapers around the world to see how international publications were portraying Barack Obama’s “historic victory”. Below are the front pages of 27 newspapers around the world the after U.S. election:

The picture of Barack Obama with a single tear was one of the most visible images in international newspapers. Interestingly, I couldn’t find any Russian newspapers with news about Obama on the front page. The Iranian Times carried the headline, “World hopes for a less arrogant America” next to a story about “US Failures” without any pictures of Obama. On the other hand, every single newspaper in Spain was Obamafied. The leading newspaper in Barcelona, Spain printed a full size picture of Martin Luther King.

From a design perspective, notice how the different newspapers visually depict the news and how they brand the United States.

SOURCE: The “Today’s Front Pages” section of The Newseum’s website, which features 714 front pages from 66 countries. The Newseum is a Washington D.C. interactive museum of news history.