The Guardian’s conversion to ‘Berliner’ format will happen on Monday 12 September.
UPDATE: 9 September - An image (left) of the new look has been released by The Guardian - including a last-minute change of masthead.
The announcement (official PDF here) was issued at 10:40 on 1 September 2005. [Note: you may find that free registration is required to access Guardian web pages] The new so-called ‘Berliner’ page dimensions are, at 470mm by 315mm, about the width of a standard UK tabloid but some 110mm taller. This format is new to the UK, but used by some newspapers in continental Europe (for example France’s Le Monde, Spain’s La Vanguardia, and Italy’s La Repubblica). The move has necessitated massive expenditure on totally new printing presses both in London and Manchester, with the side benefit of being able to print colour on every page.
The Guardian’s change of format - a major event in UK newspaper publishing (let alone for The Guardian) - has been, in part, forced by the recent gradual conversions of its daily rival The Independent, closely followed by The Times, to a standard UK tabloid page size from the autumn of 2003, both being fully tabloid by November 2004. These two tabloid (or ‘compact’ as they like to call it) quality newspapers have been growing their share of sales at the expense of The Guardian. Despite this, in February 2004, The Guardian rejected a move to standard tabloid format. Then rumours of the ‘Berliner’ page size were confirmed end of June 2004. Personally, I am glad that The Guardian has gone for something a bit different and distinctive. Now there are rumours that The Daily Telegraph, the only remaining daily broadsheet, might also go the ‘Berliner’ route.
Originally, April 2006 was pencilled in for the ‘Berliner’ relaunch of The Guardian, so the actual September 2005 date announced is a major triumph (although the original April 2006 date could have been a smokescreen to wrong-foot the opposition). It comes not a moment too soon, as The Guardian’s (latest) July 2005 average daily sales figure of 358,000 (source: Audit Bureau of Circulations) is its lowest July figure since July 1978! Interestingly, although The Guardian’s daily sales number is relatively low for a UK newspaper, its hugely successful GuardianUnlimited website has one of the highest worldwide audiences of any newspaper site on the web, seen by over 11m unique users in July 2005.
The Guardian is being redesigned ‘from scratch’ by an in-house team led by Creative Editor Mark Porter. It will use an exclusive, specially created new typeface, ‘Guardian Egyptian’. The ‘G2′ section, originally standard tabloid in size, will now be a half-’Berliner’ size (slightly larger than A4) stapled magazine - described as the UK’s first daily newsprint magazine. There will be a daily science page, a new economics section, and expanded comment and letters section. Lloyd Shepherd, Head of Development at Guardian Unlimited, says in his weblog:
“I have never for a minute subscribed to the “death of newspapers” theories, and believe me - the redesigned Guardian is beautiful and exciting and will want you to buy newspapers again. Just suspend any prejudices you may have, be they anti-Guardian or anti-paper, on September 12 and get yourself a copy if you’re in the UK or Ireland. You may disagree with what is said in the words, but you won’t be able to argue that the format isn’t spectacular.”The last time The Guardian was completely redesigned was by David Hillman, whose influential design was introduced 12 February 1988. Despite being refreshed by Simon Esterson a decade later, today’s broadsheet Guardian retains much of the Hillman look (including the distinctive title with the italic serif ‘The’ followed by an extra bold sans-serif ‘Guardian’).
The Guardian’s Sunday sister paper, The Observer, will convert to the ‘Berliner’ format (and presumably also undergo a radical redesign?) ‘early next year’.
UPDATE: 9 September 2005 - windows media file of Channel 4 News item about the Berliner Guardian with some shots of Berliner pages
UPDATE: 8 September 2005 - An excellent article in Press Gazette: Rusbridger: why I did it the Berliner way interviews Guardian editor Rusbridger and reviews a ‘dry run’ dummy issue of the new Berliner Guardian - in words only (no pictures were allowed!). Looks like the Berliner main section will have a 5-column page which means wider columns than usual - I think this is excellent news: columns have been increasing in number and narrowing over the years (to accomodate advertisers?) which, in my view, does not look so good. Quality = wider columns in my mind. (Take a look at old copies of newspapers - they tend to have less and/or wider columns).
For useful background reading, see this year’s Hugo Young lecture by Alan Rusbridger (editor of The Guardian) ‘What are newspapers for?’ (March 2005) and The Observer article Will quality sell? Only you have the answer (August 2005).
There is a strange custom amongst newspapers that the newspaper undergoing the change is reluctant to say too much whilst, understandably, rival newspapers are not keen to give their competitors ‘free publicity’. So we find The Guardian itself, apart from a small announcement on Friday, strangely quiet about its imminent transformation with the best article appearing in a rival, The Independent on Sunday: Dateline Berliner: ‘The Guardian’ gets ready to be born again. Annoyingly, this may become pay to view after a few days, so here are a few interesting opinions from the article.
Paul Thomas, managing partner of the media agencyMindShare:”
“I have seen it [the Berliner Guardian] and I think the prospects are good. It has full colour throughout and the layout is refreshing. It is a brave decision to do something different, but the newspaper market in general is not at its most healthy and this will give them stand-out appeal.”Terry Watson of the international newspaper design consultants Palmer Watson:
“Berliner is a great format. It is definitely the right move for The Guardian. Because of the associations the tabloid shape has in British minds I am sure that if The Times had been able to move directly from broadsheet to Berliner it would have done it. […] There will be several chief executives at other titles desperately hoping the Berliner Guardian is a flop. They know their editors wanted to try this years ago. Conservatism about formats was universal on the commercial side of the newspaper business until The Independent proved how attractive change can be.”Lynne Anderson, communications director of the Newspaper Society
“The trend towards format change is new to the nationals and has been seen as very innovative, but many regional newspapers changed format years ago. Regional newspapers regularly canvass their readers and respond accordingly - to great effect in newspapers like the Western Mail, the Liverpool Daily Post and The Belfast Telegraph, all of which relaunched and achieved considerable circulation increases. Readers seem to prefer new-look papers.”Roger Mosey, head of BBC Sport:
“The Guardian has been talking about being more a journal of record and looking at something like the BBC model where we try to get the maximum objectivity into our news coverage. As a consumer, I do sometimes worry that significant areas of the modern media have lost the art of reporting. If The Guardian achieves that and it filters into the wider market it would be a good thing.”
Backlink: The Guardian to relaunch in smaller form this autumn [June 2005]