WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

I asked several INNOVATION consultants which covers they liked the most from the ASME competition. Here are the first choices of Javier Errea, our chief design consultant. Javier’s work with El Economista led to it being named one of SND’s best designed newspapers in the world and his work with Expresso propelled it to the best designed European wekly newspaper of the year in 2006.

A world record!

Javier likes these cover winners from The New Yorker:

Both, he says, are delicate, alegorical and powerful, and at the same time, simple and very smart.

And he also likes the Time magazine cover with the Republican elephant rear.

Monocle’s November issue has a cover story (subscription only) about the future of print media.

Tyler Brule’s magazine selected only a few newspapers.

One of them is Expresso from Portugal, which was also included as a trendy paper in the inaugural issue of the magazine.

In their own words:

“Less text, more information” was the principle behind the 2006 redesign of the Portuguese weekly.

“We wanted to cut the fat out, make it leaner,” explains the editor, Henrique Monteiro.

“We had the professional audience but we wanted to attract younger people.”

Pairing up with Javier Errea from media consultants Innovation, Monteiro made the switch from broadsheet to colour Berliner format.

Mário Feliciano, a Portuguese typographer, delivered fonts inspired by 18th-century Iberian text.

Bullet points, fact boxes and small Q&As now sit next to more white space to help readers digest the big stories.

As a result, 25-34-year-olds have replaced 45-54-year-olds as the core demographic.

Female readers are up from 42 to 48 per cent, while circulation has risen 9 per cent in the past year to 130,000.

(Thanks to Gabriel Sama)

I get Expresso every week by mail.

It’s a real pleasure.

To read it.

To see it.

To enjoy it.

The leading paper of Portugal looks fresh, provocative, smart and EASY to read.

In the September 15th edition, they have a full page with a summary of the last 12 months after the relaunch of the new editorial formula for print and online, the new format and the new design.

The results of our work with Expresso have been better than expected by some competitors and early critics of what was considered a dramatic change.

Well, it was dramatic.

But Expresso is now better than ever:

52 weeks after the INNOVATION work, Expresso sells 9.1% more paid copies than the year before.

Advertising is up 3.9%.

And Expresso now has more young readers than any other Portuguese newspaper.

The 5 secrets of this INNOVATION project:

1. A two-year plan that started with a new editor and new art director.

2. A unique, dramatic, content-driven redesign that won many international design awards.

3. Better content than ever in new quick, easy-to-read formats.

4. Training, training, training.

5. A great marketing campaign.

Luiz Carvalho posted a video report of the night of the change on YouTube, that shows the founder of Expresso, Francisco Pinto Balsemao, pressing the button that sent the last page to the printer.

What a night, what a year!

These are some amazing pages.

(Thanks to Marco Grieco, Art Director)

Next week in Boston (USA), El Economista and Expresso will get several world design awards.

And today, the judges of the ÑHO4, the annual competition for the best newspaper design in Spain and Portugal, announced that El Economista and Expresso have won many new awards.

El Economista is the best-designed Spanish newspaper of the year for the 20,000-50,000 copies category, and Expresso is the best redesign of the year in Spain and Portugal.

El Economista is a new national financial newspaper published in Madrid by Alfonso de Salas, the founding CEO of El Mundo.

Expresso is the leading quality national weekend newspaper of Portugal, founded by Francisco Pinto Balsemao.

(Before)

(After)

These two newspapers from Madrid and Lisbon are INNOVATION clients, and Javier Errea, our chief design consultant, was the leading force behind the graphic projects.

Javier Errea, after the highly successful redesign of Eleftheros Typos in Athens (Greece) and Capital in Sofia (Bulgaria), is now working on several new projects: Diario de Navarra in Pamplona (Spain), Al Bayan in Dubai (UAE), and El Heraldo in Barranquilla (Colombia).

Javier is a journalist who has been a reporter, editor, designer and now another worlwide-award-winning INNOVATION consultant.