Starting in June 2019, readers of The Philadelphia Inquirer are seeing a new logo not just atop the front page of the printed edition, but on the website as well.
The Inquirer is a brand that always resonates with me, as it was one of my projects in 1996, so I am aware of the traditions the Inquirer folks hold dear. After all, Ben Franklin even wrote for a forerunner of this newspaper—and Mark Twain was briefly a typesetter.
I recall, as we were doing the redesign of The Inquirer, when Max King was editor in chief, how I was reminded, at every step of the process, about the newspaper’s history, the brand’s tradition and how to make sure that it was all preserved as we added more color and created a new set of story structures.
In 2009, I returned briefly to The Inquirer, this time with the assistance of our then-Art Director / Project Manager Reed Reibstein, who is now back at The Inquirer as Product Design Manager. Our goal in 2009 was to unify the three extremely different brands: The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News (their tabloid sister paper), and Philly.com. That has now been accomplished, as they are all under inquirer. com
The old and new logo
The Inquirer team has done a thorough clean up of the Inquirer’s logo, and it is obvious in the treatment of the P and the I.
The biggest challenge, in their own words
https://www.inquirer.com/about/philadelphia-inquirer-new-logo-design-process-20190601.html
The new design preserves the visual connections to its original typeface, while being optimized to work across digital and print platforms. These small changes will have a big impact on the way the brand is represented on Inquirer.com, mobile apps, social media channels, in print, and throughout the Philadelphia region.
One of the biggest obstacles with the original logo design was the ambiguous look of the “I” in Inquirer. The team focused significant effort on making the “I” more readable so it could stand alone as an icon.
Of related interest
The 1986 Philadelphia Inquirer redesign
https://issuu.com/mariogarcia/docs/newspaper_revolutions
Those of you interested in my first redesign of The Inquirer can now access the chapter of Newspaper Evolutions in which I presented a case study of that redesign. It shows in detail the thinking process behind that redesign, along with sample pages and a graphic history of the Inquirer up to that point.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Mario+Garcia+Newspaper+Evolutions&ref=nb_sb_noss
Previously about The Inquirer in the blog
The Philadelphia Story (Entry 1):
https://www.garciamedia.com/blog/articles/a_very_special_project_for_me_the_philadelphia_story
The Philadelphia Story (Entry 2):
The Philadelphia Story (Entries 3-4-5):
Mario’s speaking engagements
Nov. 12
Keynote presentation: Business Information & Media Summit (BIMS).
Order print edition of The Story from Amazon
You can order the print edition of my new mobile storytelling book, The Story, from Amazon already here:
Pre-order The Story
The newspaper remains the most powerful source of storytelling on the planet. But technology threatens its very existence. To survive, the Editor must transform, adapt, and manage the newsroom in a new way. Find out how, pre-orderThe Story by Mario Garcia, chief strategist for the redesign of over 700 newspapers around the world.
Order here:
https://thaneandprose.com/shop-the-bookstore?olsPage=products%2Fthe-story
The Story will also appear in print
I am happy to announce that we will, indeed, have a print edition of my mobile storytelling book, The Story. I thank you for expressing your interest to our publisher, Thane Boulton, of Thane & Prose. Now the print edition will be a reality, and you can already see the cover and back cover here:
An interview of interest
http://www.itertranslations.com/blog/2019/3/11/fd60ybflpvlqrgrpdp5ida5rq0c3sp
The Inquirer is a brand that always resonates with me, as it was one of my projects in 1996, so I am aware of the traditions the Inquirer folks hold dear. After all, this is a newspaper that even Benjamin Franklin wrote for. I recall, as we were doing the redesign of The Inquirer, when Max King was editor in chief, how I was reminded, at every step of the process, about the newspaper’s history, the brand’s tradition and how to make sure that it was all preserved as we added more color and created a new set of story structures.
TheMarioBlog post # 3094