The Guardian
| Designer | GMG (Guardian Media Group) |
| Dates | Founded in Manchester in 1821 |
Description
The Guardian was the first paper to be printed in the Berliner format. The Berliner format is a newspaper with pages normally measuring about 470 mm × 315 mm (18½ in × 12.4 in). The Guardian is one of the two national newspapers to be printed in full colour in Britain, however the release in Northern Ireland still has a lot of black-and-white content.
Over the years the Guardian has won a number of awards. The British Press Awards awarded the paper with National Newspaper of the Year in 1999 and 2006.
In 2006, the team behind the Guardians redesign into the Berliner format was nominated for the Designer of the Year award. This award is in the design industry the equivalent to prizes like the Booker and Turner prize. This nomination is the first time an editorial design project as been entered into the awards. Former winners of this award include Jonathan Ive (Head of Design-Apple Computers).
The paper has also been the winner for six years in a row, again by the British Press Awards, for Best Electronic Newspaper.
After the re-design, Guardian sales increased by 18,097 copies (4.8%) year on year, resulting in nearly 400,000 copies of every issue being printed. During this time the sales of both the Times and Daily Telegraph was in decline over this period. This resulted in the papers share of the nation newsprint daily sales increasing from 16.8 per cent to 17.5 per cent.
A Personal View
In terms of editorial design the Guardian, I believe is the market leader.
No other mainstream national newspaper captures the same concentrated user-friendly, functional design quality. A number of nation newspapers have attempted to re-format their newspapers into a smaller size in recent years. Unlike most other re-designs, every aspect of the paper was revitalized and reinvented. Other newspapers simply tried to “shrink and fit” the content into the new size.
The Guardian completely re-thought organisational design concept of the paper you a way that gave there paper a new functional design edge. The paper has focused on the use of a strong understanding of user-friendly typography and layout design.
The Guardian understand that their readers need to be able to easily interact with the information on the page, resulting in a much more successful newspaper.
Context
John Edward Taylor published the first edition of the Guardian in May 1821. The first paper consisted of four pages and had the title the Manchester Guardian.
In 1959 the British newspaper the Manchester Guardian was re-branded as The Guardian. The paper is owned by the Guardian Media Group and is published Monday to Saturday.
The paper is printed nationwide from two print centres in London and Manchester.
The Guardian Media Group also produces the Observer Sunday newspaper, the Manchester Evening News, the Money Observer financial magazine, the Guardian Weekly International newspaper and the Guardian Monthly magazine. The Guardian website is also one of the most popular news resources on the internet.
Today Britain’s regional press is worth over £4 billion. Over 40 million people a week across Great Britain relay on trusted and relevant news from a wide host of different newsprint companies. This includes in Britain alone, 1300 different newspapers, 1100 websites, 750 magazines, 36 radio stations and 2 TV stations.
Links
www.guardian.co.uk - The Guardian Online
www.designmuseum.org - The Design Museum
www.inchdesigns.co.uk - Chris Smyth Portfolio
| Author: | Chris Smyth | Date: | March 2008 |