How the FT developed its new look

Angus Montgomery of DesignWeek spoke with Kevin Wilson, the head of design at the Financial Times, about its redesign unveiled on Monday.

Here is an excerpt:

DW: How did you strike a balance between developing the new design and holding on to elements of the previous FT look?

KW: It helped that this was essentially an in-house redesign led by myself and Mark Leeds, freelance design consultant, and design consultant to FT Weekend Magazine. The main elements of the newspaper’s previous look are to do with tone: serious, calm, authoritative and traditional. Our overriding aim was to make the tone of the design appropriate to our journalism and reputation, while making use of the best modern elements of navigation, graphics and type. As the editor – and reader groups – told us, the FT wasn’t broke, so it might have been damaging to signal a wholesale change of approach. Rather, we had to respect the multifaceted nature of FT journalism – from business, to arts, tech and sport. We also had to remember that to many readers, the FT is a professional tool, a complex two-section paper that they approach in different ways. Some start from the back Companies section, and jump to specific points in the run – absorbing news, data and analysis quickly and using the paper as a tool in their professional lives. Others take a more conventional route from the front page, through general news and comment. So any structural changes could not be undertaken for cosmetic reasons. Fortunately, the newspaper’s strengths and personality suit a calm, well-structured elegant framework, and we hope that is what we’ve achieved.

Read more here.