Mark Porter
Wednesday 24 October 2007, The Watershed
On Wednesday 24th October award-winning Guardian Newspaper Design Director Mark Porter gave his first talk in the UK outside of London for the West of England Design Forum at the Watershed. The event was a sell-out success and received very positive feedback from all who attended.
Throughout its history, The Guardian has been an innovator – whether in print or digitally, those of us of a certain age remember how radical the Hillman redesign of 1988 was. Its latest incarnation has been a feat of engineering, not just design, including the build of a factory to house the new size printing presses. The new typeface, Guardian Egyptian, designed by Paul Barnes in London and Christian Schwartz in New York, has 100 different weights and widths and has taken a six figure budget to produce.
Although The Guardian has always been a writers’ paper, Mark and his team have made many radical decisions with the design, many of them have been copied all over the world – surreptitiously or not. A five column grid which gives flexibility, bright colours working with greys to give a contemporary feel but also a sense of sobriety.
Fantastic photography plays a huge part and the radical use of a double page centre spread has had a massive impact – visual journalism is as important as the writing – and, because of The Guardian, this concept is now mainstream.
Remarkably there has been no hostility to the new design – only a favourable response. As for the website, Mark has never seen himself as a brand specialist, but has found himself creating digitally what he initially set out to produce in print.
The re-design and rebuild of the site, moving away from the original Neville Brody design, is ongoing – it’s an 18 month project which began in September 2006 and has been estimated to take four man years to deliver. Thankfully his team of four designers and some 50+ developers have the project well in hand and Mark was good enough to give us a sneak preview of what to expect in the near future.
The award winning design for both the Berliner format newspaper and website have ensured that he is staying true to the values of the original Guardian of 1821 by embracing innovation. When asked what the future held in light of growing demand for digital content and flat sales of newspapers, Mark responded: “design integration will keep us ahead of our competitors.”
For more information visit Mark Porter's website or the Guardian.
