September 12th, 2005
New look Guardian
Today sees the launch of the new Guardian newspaper here in the UK. I’m pleasantly surprised by the amount of column inches and airtime a redesign of a national is getting. Not only do we see a change to full colour, but an entirely new format for British Newspapers and a entirely new grid system design and typeface. Pretty much everything then.
There are several things which will upset people straight off with this new design. First of all is the Masthead.
The Masthead
The original Guardian Masthead, designed by David Hillman in the 80’s, clearly communicated the paper’s ‘brand’. Elegant Garamond mixed with with a hard, emotionless Helvetica. Traditional broadsheet values with left-wing modern thought. You knew what you were getting yourself into (which is why I don’t generally read the Guardian).
The new Masthead still retains the visual seperation of the ‘the’, although only in tone this time. It’s set in the new Guardian typeface, the rather unimaginitive named ‘Guardian Egyptian’, which I feel brands the paper as more middle of the road. There certainly is less distinction now with other mastheads such as the Independent or The Times.
The Colour
Not much to say on this really. The paper is now full colour, which is great and will hopefully see an improvement in the photography as a result. In fact, in the centre spread of this mornings edition, there is a full colour spread of just one photograph which does look fantastic.
The Typeface
Up until yesterday The Guardian used a mix of three typefaces — Helvetica, Garamond and Miller. Today, the paper uses just one — the newly designed Guardian Egyptian.
I think I’m a bit sad to see Hillman’s inspirational typographic design go. I’m not the biggest fan of the paper in terms of content, but the design was always fantatsic. Really great typographic design. The new typeface is ok, although some of the letterforms in the lighter weights bug me, such as the lowercase c (there’s a strange bulging going on). The heavier weights however look really good. Clearly legible at very small size and obviously designed to take into account the poop paper quality and a certain amount of bleed from the ink. A sharp looking serif, modern and very legible.
Overall, I like it.
The Size
Now this is the thing which is causing the biggest upset. For many years The Guardian was a broadsheet. Now if you talk to a broadsheet paper journalsit they often get a strange look in their eyes when discussing this paper format. The Broadsheet is steeped in history, and I for one hope it doesn’t go away entirely. But. Broadsheet papers are a pain to read, wherever you are. Even on the couch.
Over the past few years a few of the broadsheets in the UK, most famously The Times, have moved to a tabloid format for the daily (the Sunday paper is still Broadsheet) and as a result has seen their circulations rise whilst the Broadsheet papers (The Telegraph and The Guardian) has seen their circulation fall.
So, the Guardian has decided to go smaller, but not Tabloid. They’ve decided to use the Berliner, or Midi, format. The format is about as wide as a Tabloid, but taller. I think one of the major reasons for this was to set The Guardian apart from the competition, to give it a different feel (possibly to distract from the watered down redesign). Also, I feel this gives The Guardian a more European feel as there are a few papers on the continent which use this format (Le Monde in France and La Repubblica in Italy).
The Grid
With a new size, comes a new grid. The Guardian sports a clear 5 column grid which is certainly a lot clearer than the old broadsheet grid. The column measure is slightly wider, which lets the new typeface breath a little. I feel the majority of broadsheet column measures are just too thin, this new design seems just about right.
Overall Impressions
A little watered down design wise, certainly not as distinctive as before. Great to see full colur. Like the new size although it’s a shame that we see another broadsheet disappear.
You can read all about the redesign on The Guardian website
Small typo:
“Broadsheet paper’s are a pain ..”
Should be
“Broadsheet papers are a pain ..”
Other than that, judging from the PDFs I think I like the new design. I’m not too sure about the typography though. I especially liked the old masthead. Can’t wait to get a chance to buy it here in Belgium.
Thanks Lode — typo sorted.
The typography works particularly well on the really content heavy spreads. Also, it’s a very legible typeface even at small size.
Having spent my lunchhour reading the paper i can say that i quite like the almost ‘webby’ feel to the links between the various sections of the paper. There are good teasers in the main sheet for content in the sport, media and g2 sections.
G2 itself now feels a little too small. As the part of the paper i used to reach for first, i actually found the main sheet more engaging. Not sure why though.
The one thing that seems to bug me the most about the new design is the lack of whitespace gutter beneath the masthead. The headlines beneath the mast seem too squashed against it.
Love the format and layout, but, as you really let down by the masthead, for me its really diluted their identity and taken the shine off the grand unveiling of the redesign (I am a sporadic but loyal Guardain reader myself).
Very interested to see what happens with the new Neville Brody designed Guradian Unilimited next week, although I’m not hoping for much, as I wasnt a fan of his Macromedia treatment and cant help thinking he is employed on a reputation earned in a bygone (pre web) design era.
Guy — Yep, I have to agree with you there. Lack of whitespace is one of the problems with moving to a smaller format I guess.
Matt — No, I’m not sure Neville Brody is the right guy for redesiging such a text heavy web offering. After hearing him speak in March at a day long event in London, I felt he was a bit out of touch for designing for the web. Of course his grasp on graphic design is so strong that he’ll probably do an ok job although I can’t help think that Guardian Unlimited should really be designed by an AI strong team, rather than a creative one.
We’ll see next week I guess. When’s the launch date?
Couldnt agree more, although their site is loved by most readers I know, I find it terrible and a good IA team would surely whip it into shape.
I not sure of the online launch date, it was mentioned in the most recent Design Week alongside a quick story about the new typeface and doesn’t promise much, according to a Guardian spokeswoman
“In the short term the design of the network of websites will not change significantly”
…A new gif in the top left and a few new banners then.
PS — can i edit previous posts? I amazingly managed two alternative spellings of Guardian in my first post
City of sound has an interesting comment. Can’t post the link here for some reason but its on cityofsound dot com (today). The Flickr dissection of the front page on there is pretty neat too.
The first thing that struck me was the position of the barcode right at the very top centre of the front page. It looks very out of place and is a massive waste of space that could have otherwise been used for something else.
Other than that, my initial thoughts are that I quite like the design, although I have yet to get passed the first couple of pages.
It struck me as heavily influenced by web design. The little navigation cues next to the numbers, the use of what I call ‘Dunstan Orange’ for some of the sub headings and the extra white space.
I agree, there is a pretty noticeable Web design-influence here; I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I just wonder if when they’re planning to relaunch their Web site, and how faithfully it will translate this new look.
Anyway, the fact that they made PDFs of apparently every page in the debut issue for this redesign is tremendous, in my opinion. I spent a lot of time poring over them, and they’re gorgeous.
Unfortunately, the international edition of the new Guardian is not in full color. Only the frontpage and the back side are colored, both G2 and the inside are b&w.
Although the re-design takes a bold step forward, I think the typography is too trendy. The Guardian Egyptian is on of those fonts you can see everywhere right now.
Not that I entirely dislike the G. Egyptian, but I’d appreciate to see it — especially concerning the masthead — interacting with a sans-serif.
The Guardian has failed. It has failed to better itself and has failed to recognise it was already years ahead despite being years old.
Why such a radical change? Well money, probably. Or maybe Porter and his creatives got a bit bored or something.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s not a bad design, but I’ve seen better, and I expected so much more from Porter. It looks like they picked some pretty fonts and got a student to have a go. It’s lost its balls.
It was so distinctive.
How many other newspapers can claim such an untouched and consistent design history? They only ever fine tuned it. And you want to know why they let it live such a long life? Because it worked, that’s why. It was a brilliant design. Their only competitors in the UK were at The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph and that was only in the past few years.
They couldn’t just change the size, could they? No. And they couldn’t just tweak it a little bit. No. And they couldn’t stop at a spring clean; a slight evolution, even. Heaven forbid.
Instead, do you know what they really did? They just killed off a design classic. And they should be ashamed of themselves. I bet SND will love it.
Matthew — Strong words and, to a certain degree, I agree with you.
The change is good, but I doubt whether it was inevitable. It would have been nice, had it remained the same and reinvented itself. Yet, it is a treat to watch. rajaneesh. india