Notes on the Weekly re-design

With Guardian Weekly settling in to it's third issue, the best cover image so far . . I thought it time to write something about it. Guardian Weekly . . an internationally oriented weekly newspaper, carrying articles from the Guardian, plus Le Monde the Washington Post and the (London) Observer. It's not so welll read in the UK (though I think it has a wider market here than it reaches) but has a growing readership elsewhere in the world.

With this redesign, it has changed from the old Guardian typography (Helvetica, Miller) to the new Guardian typefaces(Guardian Egyptian and Guardian Sans) which were created for the Beriner redesign. There is also a format change from tabloid, and mostly mono, to half Berliner. The copies in Europe are printed on the Guardians new (ish) Berliner presses and are full colour. The US and Australian editions are printed on older presses and therefore the readers in countries served by those presses have little colour, which is less accurate than the European copies. I hope full colour Berliner presses begin to appear in these parts of the world soon!

The design brings more photography to the newspaper, but keeps display sizes down. It makes use of elements introduced in the Guardian which combine photos and text in fixed size elements. The image part of these can be photo, small info-graphic or large numbers, which are then expanded upon in the caption/quote adjacent. They serve to extend the stories, help animate the page while taking up minimal space.

We have used variations in the grid to change pace throughout the paper - from the immediacy of 4 column news to wider measures on comment and features for a more leisurely read.

We believe this is the first half-berliner format UK newspaper . . . and it has so far (third edition this week) got a favourable reception.

Having been involved twice before in changes to the Tabloid/helvetica Guardian Weekly, I know the paper well . . and I'm sure this new iteration will surprise many readers . . i hope they come to love it - I'm fairly sure they will.

An extensive redesign allows any editorial team to re-evaluate how they put a paper together, and this is a good time to be refreshing newspapers the world over. I wish GW all the best, and hope they grow and extend the Guardian's liberal voice to a wider audience worldwide . .

This week also sees a major change (designed by our Creative director Mark Porter) to the front page of the Guardian website. This brings it closer to the look and feel of it's print counterpart, and is part of ongoing development.