Guardian goes Berliner

monument

This looks good...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian

Dear reader,

As a reader of the Guardian or Guardian Unlimited I wanted you to be one of the first to know about a radical change to the Guardian, starting on Monday September 12.

The paper will be very different. It will have a new shape, larger than a tabloid but smaller than a broadsheet. It will be the only full-colour national newspaper in the UK . It's been redesigned from scratch, with a new sport section every day, a magazine-size G2, and will set new standards for the use of photography and design.

Over recent years the Guardian's brand of liberal journalism has found a huge international audience online, to become the most popular British newspaper in the world. Our challenge has been to stay true to the journalism which attracted this enormous global following, whilst at the same time producing a print version of the paper which acknowledged that readers do now prefer a smaller size page.

We believe our new format does just that, combining the portability of a tabloid with the sensibility of a broadsheet. We hope you'll take a look on Monday.

Alan Rusbridger
Editor

ivuernis

I was really looking forward to checking out the new "Berliner" size Guardian this morning but none of the newsagents in Cork seemed to have it. Apparently it never came in this morning :-(

Don't know if this was just in Cork or the whole country.

28064212

They fairly hype it up

...set new standards for the use of photography and design.

They're not exactly innovators in the field

Robbo

Anyone picked up a Berliner style one yet? I'm interested in how the supplements will turn out. The Life one on Thursday is going to be subsumed into the main paper afaik as a daily science page, which annoys me.

ivuernis

28064212 wrote:

They fairly hype it up They're not exactly innovators in the field

To be fair I think the Guardian is one of the more progressive newspapers as regards its design plus the website is streets ahead of most other newspapers.

The change to the Berliner format is a both a big risk financially and a design challenge. It would have been very easy to just go the tabloid route as the same printing presses can be used but the Berliner format requires new state-of-the-art presses.

flogen

well, it's certainly a way to differenciate itself from the rest.
I can see The Irish Times going this route in a few years time, they're holding out on format change now, but sales figures of The Indo show that it works, compact is likely to overtake the broadsheet version soon (it's gone from 129,035 [Broadsheet] and 52,045 [Compact]. to 82,771 [Broadsheet] and 81,431 [Compact] according to this.) and I'd say the broadsheet will be dropped in 2 years max. If the times went tabloid readers would be turned off, berliner could be just what they need.

monument

28064212 wrote:

They fairly hype it up They're not exactly innovators in the field

It depends what you class as innovators, but here's one example...

It will be the only full-colour national newspaper in the UK.

smiaras

This post has been deleted.

segadreamcast

flogen wrote:

well, it's certainly a way to differenciate itself from the rest.
I can see The Irish Times going this route in a few years time, they're holding out on format change now, but sales figures of The Indo show that it works, compact is likely to overtake the broadsheet version soon (it's gone from 129,035 [Broadsheet] and 52,045 [Compact]. to 82,771 [Broadsheet] and 81,431 [Compact] according to this.) and I'd say the broadsheet will be dropped in 2 years max. If the times went tabloid readers would be turned off, berliner could be just what they need.

I totally agree - though I think the Times should keep their broadsheet whilst also going 'Berliner'.

Furthermore, I bought 'The Guardian' today and couldn't help noticing that, whilst the British version is full colour, ours is in black and white from around page 12 onwards - how come?

It was the same when I paid €3 for 'The Irish Times' in Spain earlier this year and, upon finding that every page from page 2 was a poor standard photocopied page, I decided not to buy it anymore while on holiday. Why and how, in the age of internet and cheap printing, can a newspaper justify this?

jrey1981

Yep I noticed there were some b&w pics in it. I am not impressed really. It is just a marketing/sales gimmick

alleepally

NoelRock wrote:

Furthermore, I bought 'The Guardian' today and couldn't help noticing that, whilst the British version is full colour, ours is in black and white from around page 12 onwards - how come?

Because we're getting the edition printed in Northern Ireland and they don't have the capability to print more than 24 pages in colour. It's unlikely this will change anytime soon. This is according to the Guardian as I emailed just to enquire if we'd ever see a full colour edition here.