A classic Indian newspaper, The Hindu, goes for more color and a new design.
What better way to celebrate 125 years of a rich journalistic tradition in Chennai (Madras), India, and the occasion of passing the one million paid circulation mark than to incorporate a new design! That is what The Hindu has done as of April 14. The introduction of the new design has been presented through an advertising campaign based on the “Always Classic, Always Contemporary” slogan.
Garcia Media’s team, headed by Mario Garcia Sr and Jan Kny, of Garcia Media Europe, have worked closely with the internal The Hindu design team for seven months to give The Hindu a fresh look, new typographic schemes (Interstate and Chronicle in various weights), and a bright but subtle color palette of six hues that will give The Hindu a distinct personality. Chief designer for The Hindu is Brian Gaughan, with senior deputy chief designers, K.G. Rangarajan and J. A. Premjumar. M. Vedanayagam is composing controller, and Pravin Chandran Nair is deputy editor, overseeing the redesign project.
“`Contemporary-Classical,’ this is how we see our place under the sun. And this is how we wish to be read and assessed by our three million readers, a growing proportion of them young men and women,” says N. Ram, editor in chief.
“Ours is a newspaper of record, a serious, quality daily offering a variety of news, features, analysis, and comment, wedded to the classical ‘core’ values of journalism: truth-telling, freedom and independence, justice, comprehensiveness, reliability, and social responsibility,” Ram added.
For The Hindu, design has always been an important issue, as seen through evolutionary changes throughout its history. For example, The Hindu was one of the first Indian newspapers to news to the front page that used to be, as Ram describes it, ” an ad kingdom”; it was also a pioneer in adopting modular layout ,using large photographs, introducing color; transforming the format of the editorial page to make it a purely `views’ page; avoiding carry-over of news stories from one page to another; and introducing boxes, panels, highlights, and briefs.
“The challenge when redesigning a classic, elegant, and traditional newspaper such as The Hindu,” explains Mario Garcia,” is to make sure that one improves a good product, attracts younger readers, but does not take away all the wonderful attributes that have made this newspaper the icon it is within Indian journalism.’’