Designs & Formats

Le Monde, the highbrow French daily, has finally decided to get its act together and go in for a facelift to start with. It has launched its first major editorial redesign in a decade with emphasis on bigger photographs, more colour, larger typefaces, and fewer articles to hold on to its steadily eroding base of readers and advertisers. The day after The traditional Le Monde was last redesigned in...

LONDON - The Wall Street Journal is publishing an eight-page guide to the compact version of its European and Asian editions, which launch later this month. The guide, which will be published on Monday October 10, will explain the new format to readers of the paper's international editions and is being produced in the same format as the new compact version. It will contain many of the design...

Debates about the compact vs broadsheet had been raging in the newspaper world for a while. But when a newspaper of the stature of the Guardian underwent a metamorphosis last week, many finally woke up from their stupor. The which-is-better debate is changing tack now to has-the-future-begun-to-take-shape. This graphic is for free use. To use it on a website, just save the image and use it on your...

What exactly is Alan Rusbridger trying to do with the Guardian, or "theguardian", as its masthead has it? On Monday, readers had their first sight of the new Berliner format, which is a shrunken broadsheet or a puffed-up tabloid, depending on how you look at it. But the biggest interest, for many, will be in how, if at all, Rusbridger changes the editorial content. The Times (of which more later)...

THE reputations of many national newspaper editors are on the line this autumn but none faces so critical a test of his judgment as Alan Rusbridger, Editor of The Guardian. Strategic decisions by Rusbridger’s two predecessors were critical to The Guardian’s standing. As editor for 19 years from 1956, Alastair Hetherington removed Manchester from the masthead, moved his office to London and made...

LONDON - The Guardian's Berliner relaunch provided a dramatic 40% sales increase on its first day of distribution. Unofficial figures suggest that The Guardian put on the 40 per cent growth following the move to the smaller format, which was supported by a major advertising campaign through DDB London. The paper is in need of significant sales increases to offset the £80m it has invested in the...

Within one week, a 184-year-old re-invents itself, a nova product for an up to now non-existing market will hit the streets, and an online product's official print version is launched. Is it coincidence that all these happened within one week, or is it just emphasising the vibrant potential of the print media market? Previously, analysts were reluctant to sound anywhere near positive about print...

A couple of parts of the traditional English landscape changed significantly this week. Not only did the country's much-maligned cricket team--eventually and after much anxiety--regain The Ashes (a sporting trophy the origin of which, like the game itself, perpetually confounds brief description), but there is now an unfamiliar presence on news stands each morning. The Guardian, the venerable...

LONDON - The Observer could be set to make the switch to the Berliner format before Christmas, following sister title The Guardian in making an early format switch and beating rival the Independent on Sunday to the punch. The Observer had been due to change format early next year, but with The Guardian move out of the way, speculation is that Guardian Newspapers wants to move ahead the Sunday...

Britain's Guardian newspaper, a venerable 184-year-old broadsheet, has become the latest major daily to convert to a compact format in a bid to win back younger, time-pressed readers who often turn to electronic means to get their news. Unlike its rivals -- The Times of London and The Independent, which have converted to the smaller tabloid format -- The Guardian has chosen the "Berliner" format...