2011 Winners & Shortlists

Brief Explanation

The main challenges faced in the project are the: size of the newspaper, the editorial strategy, the sustainability of the new design. The newspaper must fit in with its city, its readers, and the communities it serves. The newspaper must have its own identity and personality and face its declining readership. It needs to be a vibrant, contemporary newspaper totally created for the reader of the “always on” culture, which approaches life with a constant desire be informed whenever and wherever he wants it.

The Brief

The brief is to re-design an existing tabloid newspaper "SHAMS" for the youth market of Saudi Arabia (age 18-45). The aim of the re-design is to jump-start the newspaper in a fresher more modern direction both on the editorial and design level.

How the final design was conceived

The newspaper emphasizes modern newspaper rethinking: ease of navigation, a two-track approach to news and feature presentation, color-coding to identify sections. Comprehensive design activities ranged from analysis to concept development to prototype production to extensive post-launch review. Final pages were devised in close cooperation with the clients’ in-house project teams. Supervision and quality control on the creation of a comprehensive design stylebook. The "branding" aspect went further by designing a family of four typefaces for the titles and body text in three weights for efficient information hierarchy and readability.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

We supervised the creation of a comprehensive design stylebook and helped train, a month-long training, for the implementation of the design into the newspaper's daily production. The extensive one-month training included two complimentary aspects: rigorous editorial training and detailed design training. After less than a year, the newspaper is still implemented in the same rigorous editorial and design feel that was drawn out for it by the design consultant.=