- Nameplate set in FB Titling Gothic from Font Bureau and Ivy Style. Type system from scratch for a major newspaper. Aperture, the Guardian.
- The Guardian - Back to home. News Opinion Sport Culture Lifestyle Show More News US news World news. The 10 best fonts The 10 best fonts. Share on Facebook; Share on Twitter. It is a condensed font, meaning on a very simplistic level that it creates a strong mass when used as text and therefore the type can become more of a shape.
The Guardian newspaper has unveiled a simplified and smaller tabloid format, as well as a website redesign that includes the launch of a new logo and font.
Vincent Connare, typographer
I was working for Microsoft’s typography team, which had a lot of dealings with people from applications like Publisher, Creative Writer and Encarta. They wanted all kinds of fonts – a lot of them strange and childlike. One program was called Microsoft Bob, which was designed to make computers more accessible to children. I booted it up and out walked this cartoon dog, talking with a speech bubble in Times New Roman. Dogs don’t talk in Times New Roman! Conceptually, it made no sense.
So I had an idea to make a comic-style text and started looking at Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, graphic novels where the hand lettering was like a typeface. I could have scanned it in and copied the lettering, but that was unethical. Instead, I looked at various letters and tried to mimic them on screen. There were no sketches or studies – it was just me drawing with a mouse, deleting whatever was wrong.
I didn’t have to make straight lines, I didn’t have to make things look right, and that’s what I found fun. I was breaking the typography rules. My boss Robert Norton, whose mother Mary Norton wrote The Borrowers, said the “p” and “q” should mirror each other perfectly. I said: “No, it’s supposed to be wrong!” There were a lot of problems like that at Microsoft, a lot of fights, though not physical ones.
Comic Sans was developed too late for Microsoft Bob, but our office administrators started using it a lot in emails – mostly young women whose jobs were to make everything fun. They did birthday parties, organised events, and Comic Sans fitted with their cheery messages. As it became more well-known, it was eventually included in Windows 95.
I started to see it everywhere – and then the backlash began. A group called Ban Comic Sans was formed to educate people about the uses of typefaces, though they did email me to ask if it was OK to set it up. It seemed silly, but I said knock yourselves out. Though that backlash has calmed down, except on Twitter. People who come up to me are more likely to say they love it.
Type should do exactly what it’s intended to do. That’s why I’m proud of Comic Sans. It was for novice computer users and it succeeded with that market. People use it inappropriately: if they don’t understand how type works, it won’t have any power or meaning to them. I once heard a guy at a Rothko show say: “I could have done that.” He clearly doesn’t know anything about art. He’ll probably use Comic Sans without realising it’s wrong in certain circumstances.
I’ve only ever used Comic Sans once. I was having trouble changing my broadband to Sky so wrote them a letter in Comic Sans, saying how disappointed I was. I got a £10 refund. In those cases, I would recommend it. The basic theory is that typography should not shout – but Comic Sans shouts.
Tom Stephens, program manager, Microsoft
My job was to match products to fonts, sort of like a marriage broker. Comic Sans was designed for Microsoft Bob, which in many ways was a precursor to Cortana or Siri – for people who had problems with computers. A woman called Melinda French was helping to head it up. I wasn’t well connected and had no idea she was dating Bill Gates and would end up marrying him.
The magic is that people took to it on their own, rather than via any Microsoft marketing. It does get misused, usually because somebody just loves it. Things like the slideshow at Cern, where they announced the Higgs boson in Comic Sans, that was inappropriate. But the fact that people have the freedom to say, “This is my favourite font and I’m going to use it” is a marvellous thing. The backlash, the level of hatred, was just amazing – and quite frankly funny. I couldn’t believe people could be so worked up over something as simple as a font.
It’s almost an anti-technology typeface: very casual, very welcoming. It’s like going home, back to your childhood, getting letters from family members. Or somebody might use it to get away from the staid environment of their work. When you use Comic Sans, you’re making a statement: “I’m more relaxed, more creative. I may be working in this area, but this job does not define me.”
I almost missed the new tabloid Guardian on the news stand this morning. Without the trademark strap of dark blue colour across the top, I couldn’t spot it immediately. Not that I was expecting a shouty red-top design from Britain’s most stylish newspaper, but I wasn’t anticipating quite such an understated front page either. Download saint seiya the movie 5 sub indo.
Although the new tabloid masthead has a subtle modern blockiness, it seems positively traditional with its two-deck format and return to capital letters. Perhaps this is an attempt to reassure readers that the integrity of its news values has not shrunk along with its size. Or maybe it is just part of what the paper’s editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, describes as a simple, confident and impactful new font.
Whatever the rationale, its impact was a little lost on me this morning as I impatiently scanned the news stand. The old masthead, with its lowercase letters and palette of blues, stood out in a sea of black, white and red.
Identity and expectation
But maybe I just find change difficult? And, of course, a redesign should result in significant changes otherwise there’s no point in it. In the shift from Berliner to tabloid format, The Guardian designers have succeeded in making these significant changes while keeping the title’s overall identity.
This is largely down to the fact that the new “Guardian headline” font is not so different from the old, it just has slightly sharper serifs (the little projections off the edges of the typeface). Also, they have maintained their commitment to giving pictures lots of room to shine, including the famous centre spread image, and have kept all that lovely white space around headlines and bylines.
Big pictures and white space are crucial to The Guardian’s identity and its readers’ expectations – and it’s clear these elements have remained a major consideration in the new redesign. It’s no mean feat to fit wide gaps between columns of text, and substantial white space into a tabloid design without impacting on the length of stories and the size of the pictures. And there’s plenty to read in this new tabloid Guardian, maybe even a bit too much for a busy weekday, but readers need some value for money at £2 a go.
In living colour
Much of the redesign effort seems to have gone into the new range of bright, energetic colours throughout the publication and this really shows. The blue detail of the news pages in the main paper has been replaced with red in the bylines, pullout quote boxes, captions and page numbers. And it’s a nice red – bright but not shocking, which I think works well on the news pages.
Guardian Newspaper Online
Yellow and turquoise are the colours of the sport pages with blocky black-on-yellow headlines that bizarrely bring to mind the front of Heat magazine. These garish reverse headlines on sport were a bit of a surprise – and I wondered if it was a mistake when I saw the first one. They don’t feature on every page, and I’m still not sure if this randomness is a good or bad thing. They also don’t feature on The Guardian’s new redesigned website, the old dark and light blue colours are still in play on the online sport pages.
The G2 features and arts supplement is a riot of pink, yellow, orange and turquoise, again somewhat reminiscent of a glossy celebrity magazine. The new bright palette works at its best in G2, the colours are engaging and carry the implicit promise of some interesting reads. They also make it easy to navigate the features, and I particularly like the yellow band highlighting prime-time programmes in the TV listings at the back.
The new Journal supplement – which features long reads, comment pieces and puzzles – is a more sombre affair with pale peachy pages and black or orange fonts, more suited to the opinion pieces and readers’ letters that it features. This pullout is very easy on the eye, it’s got an calm, uncluttered design, and it’s good to see there’s still room for a couple of opinion cartoons too.
It has a very broad content remit – opinions and ideas from across the globe apparently, and only time will tell how this section will fare in the long term. Puzzles have been spread across both the G2 and Journal supplements, making them easier to share, which is a nice touch.
Mixed bag
Guardian Newspaper For Today
On the digital front, the redesigned website looks clean and attractive with its colour-coded sections and plethora of pictures standing out against plenty of white space. Navigating the site is very easy, thanks to clear categories and a comprehensive drop-down menu in the “More” section. It’s definitely a worthy partner to the newspaper, or should that be the other way round?
The redesign of the newspaper is a bit of a mixed bag for me, but if it gives The Guardian a new lease of life financially, then it will have served its purpose.