The voice of the left in the UK, The Guardian, has radically redesigned the paper after falling sales thanks to its main rival, The Independent, going tabloid.
The new design has been in the offing for over a year but the relaunch will take place this Monday (12 September) and a first official preview has just been made available.
On top of a redesign – with new, gentle blues and a cleaner, calmer font – the paper has changed to a new “Berliner” size – similar to Le Monde. The most interesting thing though is that the paper has moved to entirely new print presses, producing the best quality newspaper ever created in the UK: great clarity, no newsprint coming off onto your fingers and full colour throughout.
In short, it is a radical step in the ongoing history of newspapers. And the paper has used the redesign to completely overhaul its content. Dozens of freelance contributors have been told their services are no longer needed, new section editors have been given free reign to restructure their areas, and new writers have been brought in.
The Guardian has invested massively and is naturally hoping it will give it the edge in the market. Since it will take at least a year for other papers to follow suit, if the redesign is popular, it may be a decision of genius. But then you just never know. The Today newspaper was hailed as the future when it was launched in 1986. It was colour, non-union and had a keen innovative team, but for a wide variety of reasons it sank.
Should be interesting to see what happens to The Guardian.
Anyway, this is how the new paper will look:
