Looking forward to the new Guardian…

So the big typographic / design story of the moment should be the redesign and resizing of The Guardian. But, I have to be honest, most of the design sites I normally visit don’t seem to be talking about it at all. The first newly-designed issue comes out tomorrow, and the last redesign was one of the most controversial and revolutionary of the last fifty years. You can see a version of the cover and a set of features about the redesign over on the Guardian’s site. I’m particularly excited about this after going to see an exhibition on Newspaper design a year ago (see the Flickr set) with Matt Webb, Phil Gyford and the rest of Map Club. After a few presentations, a discussion started about the Guardian’s move to the Berliner format. A year later, we’ll get to see what it actually looks like.

From the digital images I’ve seen so far, though, my initial impressions are mixed. I’m quite excited about the size and format changes and the typography sounds fascinating. I’m not completely convinced by the all lower-case logo though – it seems to me to be a bit sexygirl153 and not really serious enough. A friend reliably informs me that in the whole sub-dom culture, submissives often write their names entirely in lower-case. She suggested that perhaps this gave the wrong impression to a paper that aims to be authoritative. I think she might have a point, and fear that the branding might play right into the hands of people who think it’s a woolly liberal publication for spineless school-teachers. But then I haven’t seen it close-up yet.

One thing I think might compensate for that image is the new advert they’re running, which really pushes the whole dynamic change idea as well as the size shift and the increase in the use of colour. It’s a great little advert and might push the publication out to a whole range of new potential readers.