The Guardian’s relaunch issue has won a rare and much-coveted Black Pencil Award (only two were awarded this year) at the D&AD Global Awards in London. The Black Pencil (or “Gold Award”) is only awarded for work that “breaks the mold or sets a new standard of excellence in creativity.”

Past Black Pencil winners include Wieden+Kennedy UK for the Honda Grrr ad (2005) and Apple for the iPod (2002) and Jonathan Ive’s colored iMacs (1999).

Congrats to Art Director Mark Porter and The Guardian crew!

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The Guardian, which relaunched as a Berliner last fall and was named one of the World's Best-Designed Newspapers last month, was named Newspaper of the Year at the British Press Awards last night.

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Four months after The Guardian's relaunch as a Berliner, Business Week weighs in. They are not fans.

The entire newspaper is set in a new font called "Guardian Egyptian." Not quite modern, not quite traditional, it strikes a middle ground between the quaint "Comic Sans" and the uninspiring "Clarendon." The previous graphic incarnation, developed in 1988, was much preferred, it had a certain cutting-edge look and the use of fonts, dividing lines, and pictures made almost any page in the newspaper a well-considered exercise in composition and typography. For the masthead, the italic Garamond font had a human quality and flair, and the extra bold Helvetica was a solid, modern, significant addition. This combination gave the paper and the brand authority, modernity, and a sense of place in the crowded British market.

The Guardian looked like no other newspaper. The traditional serifs and gothic fonts of papers such as the Times and the Telegraph were all remnants of the era of Victorian London, when they began. The Guardian broke this tradition; it made waves in society and gave us beautiful pages to look at. Now, with the uninspiring layouts and dull fonts, the Guardian seems to be saying "I give up, I can't keep up anymore. I need to sit down for a while."

>The Guardian's Shades of Gray [Business Week]

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The team responsible for The Guardian redesign has been nominated for the Designer of the Year, a top British design award. It's the first time an editorial project has been nominated.

Alice Rawsthorn, chair of the jury and director of the Design Museum, which runs the prize, said: "The team behind the Guardian redesign set out to create a model modern newspaper — and they succeeded.

"Unlike some other newspaper format changes, this was not just a shrink-to-fit. Every aspect of the paper was revitalised and reinvented. This is an extraordinarily innovative and intelligent way of addressing the commercial challenges of the newspaper industry."

«snip»

Mark Porter, the Guardian's creative editor, said: "One of the reasons that it is incredibly gratifying to be nominated is that the jury has acknowledged how much of our work is about usability. The most important aspect of the project was making the newspaper easy and enjoyable to read."

He paid tribute to the enormous team effort that had contributed to the redesign, and said he was delighted the Guardian was on such an "interesting and wide-ranging shortlist — part of the point of the award is that it encourages people to realise that design fundamentally affects the world around us".

>Guardian on shortlist for top design award [The Guardian]

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Leading British design writer Rick Poyner has let The Guardian's remake marinate for a week and, in a post at Design Observer, is positive, with reservations.

The main problem with the front page is the fold. This creates a visible surface smaller than a tabloid and, when turned sideways on a newsagent’s shelf, it does little to attract attention. The unnecessarily large teasers and the masthead monopolise more than half of the visible area. Unfolded, the front page is attractive, but it remains to be seen whether the new five-column grid, which replaces an eight-column grid, has enough flexibility. In the first week, the paper used two picture placements twice on the front page — a slightly worrying sign. The row of news summaries at the bottom further reduces the space available to create striking lead stories. So far, the front pages have lacked the old Guardian’s news focus and drama. They are trying to squeeze too much in.

Inside the main paper, the pages are clearly structured, with sharp headlines and good use of white space, and the different weights of Guardian Egyptian give plenty of typographic variety.

But David Hillman, architect of The Guardian's 1988 redesign, isn't sold on the changes.

It is the masthead that grates most of all. Gone is the Garamond (which was intended to signal stylish features) and the Helvetica (hard news) and in their place is a blue and white logo in a font dubbed "Guardian Egyptian". Hillman says the new look reminds him of "cheap newspapers and freebies".

He says: "It's almost the same blue as Metro. There are these free newspapers in Europe called 20 Minutes, published in France, Germany and Switzerland and very successful - they also all have this blue background to their masthead. I find it cheap. It looks like an upmarket freebie."

Hillman had wondered if the blue masthead might change hue each day, in line with the kaleidoscopic advertising campaign and reflecting the newspaper's increased use of colour. But that hasn't happened.

The Guardian Egyptian he finds "inelegant", failing to represent the values of the newspaper.

>The Guardian's New European Look [Design Observer]
>Why the new Berliner gives me the blues [The Independent]

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new guardian Originally uploaded by robinh1973.

Thoughts on The Guardian relaunch abound on the internets today. Some can be found here, here and here. Also check out the Thechnorati action. Here is an annotated Flickr image of the first front page (roll your mouse over the page to see all the notes), and here are all the Flickr photos tagged "Guardian."

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Looking at PDFs of newspaper pages on a nice bright monitor is one thing, but it's entirely another experience to hold the newsprint in your hands and navigate through it. And, after all, we design newspapers for readers, not our fellow designers and their flat-screen monitors.

UK designer Manuel Sepulveda sends along these impressions of his experience with a dead-tree copy of today's first Berliner edition of The Guardian.

A reader’s (and designer’s) initial thoughts:

Really impressive: the quality of design is what suprises me the most. The sports section is as tight as one would expect from a monthly magazine. Results tables are carefully weighted and there’s great use of colour photography throughout.

In the main paper, the design tone of the Comments section is perfectly balanced, and editorially there is a good ratio between all the news departments. Unlike designers of the other upmarket press here in the UK, Mark Porter has displayed perfect command of white space — pages don’t look too heavy (or too empty) and the new font makes reading very easy and comfortable.

My only criticism is that they have totally dropped black & white photography; often the most powerful tool in photojournalism is the stark and bold black & white image, but in the enthusiasm to show-off the Guardian presses’ total use of colour this seems to have been forgotten. But the centre page single photo spread was very effective.

Alas, the promised daily Science page failed to materialise, but I suspect this was because Monday has a dedicated Law page.

The (now stapled) G2 section is now more convincingly a daily news magazine, but again the standard of design is more commonly expected in monthlies. I understand that some of the content had been prepared in advance, but if they can maintain this level of design then it will be a great achievement. The TV listings have also been improved, although they haven’t left themselves much room for expansion (other TV channels of interest to Guardian readers are to be launched in the coming months but something will have to go in order to fit their schedules in).

Holding the paper in its Berliner format is definitely more comfortable and it can be read easily, whether standing, sitting at the breakfast table, or at leisure on a bed or armchair.

On a tactile note: it may be my imagination but the paper stock seems softer, almost silky! Another bonus is that the ink rub-off is much reduced.

Despite being a fussy designer there aren’t many nitpicks that I can provide, except perhaps ones of personal taste... if it was me I would drop the horizontal bar at the top of the front page and leave this area "open”.

... and the masthead? Well, it was absolutely right to change it (initially they were going to keep the old Hillman design) but I fear that it will date very quickly and is a bit too restrained. Indeed, of all the paper, for me the weakest element is the front page. I like the comment column and the department boxes at the bottom, but don't like having two small main news items and feel they should lead with just one. And overall it does remind me of trade magazines from the early 90s — it looks like a media or architectural journal from a small desktop publishing firm.

But I’m sure the designers will recognise what works and what doesn’t and fine-tune over the coming days.

Overall... far from being disappointing, the new Guardian has delivered beyond my expectations — congratulations all-round.

Thanks, Manuel!

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Here are some pages from Monday's Guardian. And they've opened up access to the digital version of the paper until Sept. 26, so PDFs all Guardian pages are here. (Note: My version of Safari wouldn't download the PDFs, so try Firefox) You can also go here for more user-friendly links to today's PDFs.

The G2 section, by the way, is a single Berliner sheet folded, so it's half the size of the main paper, like a tabloid section would be in a broadsheet.

Update: I've added the main news photo centerspread, which I couldn't get to last night for some reason.

Continue reading "The Guardian Launches*"

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Here's tomorrow's Guardian front page. More pages eventually, I hope.

Update: Also, alert reader Manuel Sepulveda notes in the comments to the last post that The Guardian has posted four video interviews, including one with designer Mark Porter, here.

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The Guardian has set up an Editors' Weblog that, they say, will give a look into how the first Berliner edition is put together on Sunday.

>The Editors' Weblog [The Guardian]

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The Most High BBC World Service rang me up today (well, e-mailed), in the form of a producer with the delightful name of Fuchsia, wanting somebody to talk about The Guardian's new look. I was slammed on deadline all day (and also, I can't imagine having anything intelligent to add that anyone in the far-flung corners of Her Majesty's Empire might find interesting) so I sicced them on our pal Robb Montgomery. The result, a 4-plus minute interview with Roz Atkins, aired on Saturday's 0500 GMT edition of the The World Today show. And with the kind permission of the British Broadcasting Corporation, it can be found here. (3.6MB mp3)

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The Guardian has up a relaunch page, in anticipation of Monday's switch to Berliner format, complete with PDFs of a four-page Berliner section and stories about the change.

In his piece, editor Alan Rusbridger wants you to know that it's not just the size that's changing.

There will be other noticeable changes. The new Guardian will be printed with colour on every page. Bold black sans serif headlines will have made way for a more restrained serif headline font. The titlepiece - a radical piece of eighties design genius with its then startling juxtaposition of italic Garamond and chunky Helvetica - will have been replaced by a more contemporary one using a new font designed especially for the Guardian.

It was startling, and also amazingly influential. That combination of bold sans-serif and elegant serif ital started showing up everywhere in the late '80s. Including whatever newspaper I happened to be working at at the time.

Rusbridger also notes that the body font, Guardian Egyptian Text, will be 8pt on 9.5.

There's also a story about the typography. It's built around a single family, Guardian Eyptian, with 96 members. It was designed by Christian Schwartz and Paul Barnes.

For Mark Porter, the Guardian's creative director, a new typeface was needed to anchor the calmer, more modern appearance of the Berliner. It was time to replace the oft-imitated combination of Helvetica Bold headlines and News Miller body text.

Schwartz is American but has worked in Europe; his colleague Paul Barnes is British, but has worked in the States. Porter hoped they could unite the "quirky, sparky, aggressive-looking" elements of continental typefaces with the dignity of American fonts.

Barnes began working on a sans serif font, without the little strokes at the top and bottom of letters. His fascination with typography's history drew him back to 1815, when the first face with slab (blocky-looking) serifs was invented. The Egyptian typeface became wildly popular and led to a second major innovation, when someone chopped off its serifs to produce the first sans serif font.

"I thought, why not go back and make an Egyptian and cut off the serifs," explained Barnes. "Then it suddenly dawned on me and Mark: let's make it an Egyptian. It has the flavour of serif but with a bit more oomph ... It's somewhere in the middle between serif and sans serif." In other words, it squared the circle as Porter had hoped, uniting tradition and modernity. "It's clean, without being impersonal", said Schwartz.

In another piece, Porter admits his trepidation about revamping the paper:

"To redesign completely any newspaper of this stature is unbelievable and once in a lifetime," he said. "But [David] Hillman's design (the current version) is acknowledged as the most important piece of newspaper design in 30 years. To be doing what supplants that is quite scary."

He admitted he was trying to square a circle, producing a paper that was "modern but classic; authoritative but distinctive".

"If everyone else is shouting louder and louder, the only way you can be heard is by talking in a normal tone of voice - or even whispering," said Porter.

>Berliner preview edition [The Guardian]

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Britain's Channel 4 News has a report on the impending Monday launch of the downsized Guardian. They talk to the editors of The Times, Independent, Daily Telegraph and Guardian.

Times editor Robert Thomson, for instance, says:

My impression of the version that I've seen is that it's a little bit dead-tree twee. What you might call Laura Ashley meets Liberation.

For his part, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger says:

People are going to buy it. They will find a paper that's extremely colorful - it has color on every page, and i think that in a funny way makes it both a more approachable paper and lifts it out of any market, it stops being a worthy, forbidding paper that I think in some people's minds the Guardian is.

>Mini-Guardian [Channel 4]

(Thanks, Manuel!)

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The Guardian has announced that its switch to Berliner format will happen Monday, Sept. 12. There's also a small clue about the new design.

The new Guardian design has been created by an in-house team led by the paper's creative editor, Mark Porter, and uses a new typeface, Guardian Egyptian.

Guardian Egyptian? Some sort of slab serif, perhaps?

The story also notes that The Observer, The Guardian's Sunday sister paper, will make the switch early next year. That project is being worked on by Mario Garcia (whose website appears to be offline).

And Britain's Press Gazette reports that Telegraph Group executive vice chairman Jeremy Deedes has hinted that the Daily Telegraph may consider a Berliner switch as well.

Deedes told the British Journalism Review: "It is going to be very interesting to see what happens when the Berliner-size Guardian comes out. I personally think it will really suit The Guardian, even though it's a shape alien to British readers.

"Maybe that's the way forward for The Telegraph � maintaining the essence of a serious newspaper with a convenience in size for people who don't read their newspapers at the kitchen table."

>New-look Guardian launches on September 12 [The Guardian]
>Telegraph to follow Guardian [Press Gazette]

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The Independent today runs a story about The Guardian's impending switch to the Berliner format. Tragically, the story begins thusly:

Most of those on the receiving end agree that size isn't everything. Although there are areas still where a good big 'un will beat a good little 'un, small - while not necessarily uniformly beautiful - tends these days to give greater satisfaction.

We're talking about newspapers here, of course. ...

Oh, well, yeah. Of course! Memo to newspapers everywhere: Can we please retire the hoary old misdirection lede? When you have to explain in the second paragraph what you're talking about in the first, not only is it not funny, it's a big ol' sign to try again.

Anyway, as far as actual content, the story quotes a Times of London exec who supposedly has seen a Guardian prototype.

"I thought it was design conceit rather than an exercise in reality - it had a very subtle splash headline and a clever photograph of the kind that comes along only about once a month. Well, readers don't want subtle. They want a headline that sells the story and they want immediacy. There's a problem, too, in that Berliner folded to fit into a supermarket or petrol station sales box will still show only half of the front page, which means it can't have the impact of the Indy or The Times. And I'm not sure they have yet realised that changing the format means more than simply moving a lot of furniture around the house."

>Has the Berliner come too late to save 'The Guardian'? [The Independent]

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Confirming rumors that have been floating around for months, The Guardian confirmed today that it will relaunch in Berliner format this fall, a year ahead of schedule. Its weekly sister paper, The Observer, will switch early next year (Mario Garcia is working on The Observer project).

The story also notes that 56 broadsheets converted to a smaller format last year and that about a third of newspapers around the world are published in smaller form.

>Guardian resizes ahead of schedule [The Guardian] Thanks, Malcolm!

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It's been a busy year for newspaper designers in the British Isles. First, The Independent started a tabloid edition. Then the Irish Independent did it. Then The Times followed suit. Then the Indy dumped its broadsheet edition entirely. And now, as Peter Cole writes in The Independent, details are emerging about The Guardian's plans to downsize in 2006. It's not tabloid size The Grauniad's shooting for, however, but "Berliner" size, sort of a broadsheet/tabloid hybrid like Le Monde.

The Guardian is very enthusiastic about this size, believing it to be less constricting than the pure tabloid, where there is always the temptation to go for a single picture and dominant story on each page. The Guardian's designers believe the Berliner format will give them a distinctive product, with cooler typography than a tabloid and a serious feel. It will also get round the dominance of the conventional advertisement sizes in the tabloid format.

New or reconfigured presses will be required, to serve both the north and south of the country. The Observer, owned by The Guardian, would change format at the same time. There would be no going back for either paper, no interim period of producing the old broadsheet alongside the new Berliner. It will be the first use in Britain of this size of paper, and The Observer could be the first quality Sunday paper to downsize. High risks. High stakes. But there is no doubt at The Guardian that this is what it must do. All the research says its readers find a smaller format more convenient.

>The 'Berliner' may not be too little, but is it too late? [The Independent]

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