The Guardian

update
From Berliner to tabloid
Monday 15th January 2018
• Today, our newspaper is being printed in a new tabloid
format for the first time, a decision we took seven
months ago.
• We decided then that we also wanted to redesign the
Guardian for our global readership online – to create a
beautiful new design that works for readers across
mobile, apps and desktop.
• It’s been an exhilarating period of creativity,
imagination and focus, and we’re thrilled with the
result.

• We hope you like it.

• At the Guardian we have a special relationship with

our readers.
• This relationship is not just about the news; it’s about a
shared sense of purpose and a commitment to
understand and illuminate our times.
• We feel a deep sense of duty and responsibility to our
readers to honour the trust you place in us.
• We have grounded our new editions in the qualities readers value most in
Guardian journalism: clarity, in a world where facts should be sacred but
are too often overlooked; imagination, in an age in which people yearn
for new ideas and fresh alternatives to the way things are. 

• These hopeful themes of clarity and imagination have also been our
guiding principles as the Guardian’s new design has taken shape.
• For several months, a team including our exceptional creative director 
Alex Breuer and senior editors and designers have been discussing and
refining the Guardian’s new look, as well as gathering invaluable feedback
from readers.
• We have thought carefully about how our use of
typography, colour and images can support and
enhance Guardian journalism.
• We have introduced a font called Guardian
Headline that is simple, confident and impactful.

• This was a collaboration with the design experts 

Commercial Type, who created the original
Guardian Egyptian, and is easier to read.
• We’re using a range of energetic colours, and the
much-loved Guardian visual wit and style remain
at the heart of the look.
• The masthead has a renewed strength and
confidence to represent the Guardian’s place and
mission in these challenging times.
• Guardian journalism itself will remain what it has
always been: thoughtful, progressive, fiercely
independent and challenging; and also witty, stylish
and fun.

• As you may know, my predecessor but one as editor

of the Guardian, Peter Preston, died last week, which
was very sad news for all of us at the Guardian. Peter
was a brilliant editor, like his successor, Alan
Rusbridger, and also a highly innovative one: he was
editor when we first published on the web back in
1994.
• Peter always strived to make sure that, as he put it,
the Guardian had pace, impact, and what he called
“zing”.
• Our new design has all of those things.
• Readers in the UK can buy a copy of the paper in its
new tabloid format from Monday; if you’re an app
user, you may need to update it to see the new
design. The app is free, and is available here (iOS)
or here (Android users).

• Let us know what you think. 

• Katharine Viner 
• Editor-in-chief
• • You can share any feedback or queries about the
new design by emailing us at 
new.guardian@theguardian.com
• Guardian unveils new masthead before tabloid launch
• The Guardian has unveiled a new design for its
masthead that will be used across the newspaper,
online and apps.
• The masthead has been revealed in a teaser video
narrated by the actor Maxine Peake before the launch
of the Guardian’s tabloid format on Monday.

• The design replaces the blue and white masthead that

has been used since 2005.

• Katharine Viner, the editor-in-chief of the Guardian and

Observer, posted the 30-second video on Twitter. The
video describes the Guardian as a “space for ideas”.
• Viner wrote to Guardian and Observer subscribers
between Christmas and the new year to explain the
changes to the newspapers’ formats and designs.
Katherine Viner wrote
• “The new design is the result of months of thought, creativity and
vision by a team of talented designers and senior editors, and I
hope you love it as much as I do,” she said in the letter.
• “We are thrilled by the new papers.
• They are visual and serious; explanatory and keepable; full of life
and stories and ideas.
• “As editor-in-chief of the Guardian and the Observer, my job is to
ensure that our independent journalism continues to be enjoyed
by as many readers as possible and that our print newspapers
make a positive financial contribution to securing a sustainable
future.
• Moving to the tabloid format strengthens our ability to do both,
and reinforces our ongoing commitment to print.”
• Interview on Radio 4 Today programme with editor Katherine
Viner
• Slightly more words
• More pages
• More opportunity for photos
• Done as it saves millions of pounds to print tabloid size

• Considered the role of Guardian and print- a tangible

product- to perhaps keep/collect?
• 150 million readers online (majority of their readers).
• Is the demise of print inevitable?
• Read digital in week, paper at weekend.
• Digital live, in the moment, interactive, videos (won a documentary
prize).
• Different platforms to showcase Guardian journalism.
• Unlike other papers there is no firewall, however, Points from
• 800,000 people give money for voluntary contribution. interview

• Close relationship and strong mission

• 1 billion in Scott trust
• Will lose less than 25 million this year
• Intend to break even next year and that will be the first time since 1980s
that The Guardian has broken even since the 1980s.
• The new Guardian and Observer might be smaller in form, but they’re
more modern, bold and accessible than ever.
• Inside them, you’ll find refreshed supplements, new sections and a range
of diverse voices. We’ve also used elements from our online offering, like
our handy, insightful explainers. 
• From Monday to Friday, you can enjoy all of our comment pieces, long
reads and puzzles in The Journal, our new pull-out section. G2 has been
redesigned, while our Sport section is now part of the main paper.   

• We’ll be sharing more information shortly on our Saturday Guardian and

The Observer, so watch this space for announcements regarding new
sections, columnists and features.
• We hope you enjoy the new papers.
An article by Paul Chadwick, Guardian readers’ editor
commenting on a speech by editor Katherine Viner
• Viner traces the emergence of the
newspaper in Manchester in 1821 from the
movement for more representative
democracy.
• She itemises some leaps forward and slides
backward during the Guardian’s rich
history.
• By reference to the founders’ prospectus –
“a wholly uncynical and unsnobbish
document” – and other landmark
statements, she reaffirms guiding values
including honesty, integrity,
courage, fairness, and a sense of
duty to reader and community.
• honesty, integrity, courage, fairness, and a sense of duty to reader
and community.
• Partisans note: she repeats the founders’ promise that the Guardian will
support policies not parties.
• The threats to journalism’s economic model in a new communications
environment are described, but so are the opportunities those
technologies offer for more collaborative journalism and a sustainable
future.
• Viner acknowledges the farsightedness of her predecessor Alan
Rusbridger.
• The large international audience, gathered through bold steps in digital,
significantly strengthens the membership strategy now under way and
Viner reminds us that: “The Guardian is now funded more by our
readers than by our advertisers.”
• The overarching theme is of hope – “authentic hope”, says one of her
sources – in answer to a longing.
• “Our lives are increasingly atomised,” Viner says, “but you can see the
pleasure that comes from communal or civic participation.
• People long to help each other, to be together, to share experiences,
to be part of a community, to influence the powers that control their
lives.”
• The motivating force is that the Guardian can
contribute to rebuilding the social capital that
neoliberalism’s ascendancy has sapped.
• As it did at its beginnings in Manchester, the Guardian
today should catch the mood of the people, says
Viner, and I take her to mean the Guardian’s whole
audience, UK and international.
• As in the tumultuous early 19th century so now,
she argues, the Guardian should not try to deny
what is happening but acknowledge it,
contextualise it, analyse it, try to understand it
and, in the words of the prospectus, “turn it to
beneficial account”.
• As to promises, Viner commits the Guardian to follow five principles:

• • Develop ideas that help to improve the world, not just critique it.
• • Collaborate with readers and others to have greater impact.
• • Diversify, to have richer reporting from a representative newsroom.
• • Be meaningful in all our work.
• • Report fairly on people as well as power and find things out. This
underpins all of the above.
• Every now and then, in some of the myriad contexts that practising
journalism generates, we will come back to this list.