The new look Independent launched today. The fact that it’s moved from six to seven columns per page is absolutely an advertising thing since newspaper advertising is sold by the column inch. Get an extra column and you have all those extra inches to sell!
But the paper did need a redesign. Nothing too radical, but hopefully now it’ll cope a little better in a tabloid environment. Over the last year or so The Independent has made much of its single issue front pages and, although it may seem churlish of me, I’ve not been satisfied with what it’s been doing. I say churlish, because in the past I’ve praised what Liberation have done with their single issue front pages. But overuse is a bad thing, and it’s something that the Indie has definitely been guilty of. Obviously a tabloid format essentially dictates that you have only a single front page story, but now there’s a right hand column signposting a few more stories inside.
I’m not sure that the bar across the top of the back page giving topline weather, financial headliness, and a TV highlight, really works. It eats into the space that sport gets. And if there’s one thing I do want on a back page – it’s sport.
The Review section has been folded into the main paper and it all works fairly well, although I think that TV is a bit too hidden. I always feel that it should be somewhere around the centre pages.
Overall it looks quite good. Nothing revolutionary, but good. It’s a shame that they’re not able to move to the “Berliner” format that The Guardian’s planning, which is a slightly larger tabloid size more common in Europe (as the name would suggest). That feels like it’s going to be a good size and I look forward to it.