The Observer last week won Newspaper Design of the Year in the 2006 Newspaper Awards, a contest honoring UK and Irish newspapers.

The Observer relaunched as a Berliner in January with a Mario Garcia-led redesign.

Here are pages from today's relaunched Observer. You can browse the whole digital version here, and it won't cost you a pound.

Here's the first Berliner Observer front page. More pages tk, I hope.

The Observer blog has a glimpse of the front page of the first edition.

The Observer has a blog up and running chronic(what?)ling its Sunday relaunch as a Berliner. Photos included, such as the one above of Mario Garcia in Consulting Mode.

*Update: The TV ad for the relaunch is here.

The Observer of London published its last broadsheet Sunday, and in anticipation of its relaunch as a Berliner on Jan. 8, has published a special section.

Editor Roger Alton writes:

We recognise that our readership is changing, and that to meet its new need we have to evolve, too. Size is becoming an increasingly critical factor in people's decisions about which newspaper to read, as the demand for a more efficient and accessible shape grows. For many the traditional Sunday has gone, replaced by a day of activity - whether it be shopping, working, playing sports, travelling or seeing films and visiting museums or galleries.

So the Berliner offers a perfect opportunity for vibrant design combined with an easily handled and convenient shape, easy to navigate and packed with useful information. And readers - advertisers too - used to everything the internet and modern TV technology offers, want much higher standards of presentation, which is why our state-of-the-art printing presses are designed to provide perfect colour throughout the paper, a first on a Sunday.

My team - Rodrigo Fino, Christian Fortanet and Paula Ripoll - put our best effort forward: how can one change a legend? How can one redesign a newspaper that was already quite well designed, thank you?

We started by sitting down and talking to key people at The Observer, to hear their views about the old and new paper. Editor Roger Alton outlined his vision and told us that he wanted the paper to look and feel both 'cultured and vivid'. Armed with his thoughts, we set off to devise a new visual language for the paper.