As MINT, the new financial daily of India, is born February 1, 2007, it was personally an exciting parallel for me to be part of the team rethinking the established, venerable and iconic dean of business newspapers, The Wall Street Journal, at the same time that I was creating a “NEW” financial newspaper for the NEW India
It was sort of like saluting the past, welcoming the future, and using the experience of one to enrich the other. Add to that the fact that The Wall Street Journal is an “exclusive content partner” in the new MINT, and that its editor, Raju Narisetti, was editor of the WSJ Europe until the middle of 2006, and you can see the parallels.
I approached the new Indian paper with a sort of blank page in front of me. We had guidelines from the publisher/editor, of course. We had vast marketing data to know whom we were catering the project to. But we also had a CEO of the Hindustantimes, Rajiv Verma, who said that we could present to him whatever we thought was appropriate for a newspaper totally designed for new, young readers and members of the Internet generation.
In a sense, MINT is perhaps the first financial daily totally created and planned to be an online and print product from the start.
My initial thoughts about the design;
1. It should be colorful, like India itself.
2. Ideally it should be in a small format—-we did versions of broadsheet and Berliner, and opted for the smaller, easier to handle format.
3. It must have perfect fusion with the online product. And, in fact,
I recommended from the start that this product should appear FIRST as an online newspaper, and then two weeks later on print. That is the way it will be. This newspaper is born as an online product.
4. There should be substance, but also quick reads.
5. Navigation should be paramount.
The name is MINT, which is symbolic of “money making”, of course. But at the same time, it is fresh, as tea leaves in your tea. I had suggested to the planning group that we should not start a newspaper in 2007 with a name like Times, Herald, Gazette or Post. That has been done.
One of the most fascinating design challenges here, for me, was the creation of a logo that had visual impact, significance and some type of visual icon that would be recognized.
But it took a long time to get there.
At first, we just played with the word MINT as type.
Then one day, about a month ago, I was running one morning and saw an OLD OLD INDIAN coin, very shattered, on the ground. I picked it up and it reminded me of the old coins, called gazettas that were used to buy newspapers in Italy around 1586. The reason newspapers were called gazettas then was because it was an indication to the public that it was cheap to buy the newspaper, that all you needed was a gazetta, or small change.
With my mind racing, faster than my feet, I went back to the hotel and did initial drawing, which I send you here, of coins. I liked the idea of using “tea leaves” on the coin, to go with the idea of mint. Mint and tea go together.
Then started working with a super talented illustrator from the staff in India, Jaya Chandran, and Mint art director, Anup Gupta, to design some coins that we could use as a DOT on the ”I” of MINT. I show you the evolution.
Everyone liked the iconic use of a coin, created just for MINT. Then, of course, coins have two sides. SO I told Jaya Chandran to make the flip side of the coin futuristic, as in cables, connections, and computers. One side, the old world of the gazetta, on the other the modern world of today. The result was astonishing, and the coin will be widely used for marketing purposes.
This was a highlight of the project for me.
Called Mint Lounge, this one appears Saturday and immediately the reader knows that it is a relaxed day to read, to kick off your shoes and dig into a nice piece on a variety of topics from lifestyle to dating to health to the latest automobile models. But, inside this magazinish approach, is an 8-page MINT Weekend news section with updates of all financial news.
Notice Page 2 daily, a sort of “scrolling” summary of what to find in the inside sections of the newspaper. A navigator so complete that it also ties to the online edition, while allowing for advertisers to “sponsor” this “must read” page.
News pages show the hierarchy of big headlines, good summaries, allowing for both scanners and devoted readers to get through each page quickly.
A daily section devoted to lifestyle issues, and columns on food and wines, travel, relationships.
Four daily pages from the WSJ appear in MINT, with emphasis on news coverage of India first, then Asia and the world.