Our style is simple, intuitive and elegant.
We believe that design is part of journalism.
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The redesign of NTV's website encompassed a complete rethink of the brand, its positioning and the degree to which it could start to personalise its offering and invite participation from viewers in Kenya, as well as a powerful and populist design.
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A host of new features were added to the radio site, easyfm - including a real time 'now playing' feed - making it one of Africa's most cutting edge radio websites
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We were also asked to rethink the corporate image of NMG and introduce the "of Africa, by Africa" theme into their branding and design
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Kenya's most important daily newspaper plays a huge part in the democratic life of the country. NMG asked us to reinvent the newspaper website from top to bottom, bringing in user generated content, personalisation, communities and video in a constantly refreshed mix.
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This site is one of NMG's most ambitious plays for the future, aiming to become the preeminent source of credible news throughout the continent - "the BBC of Africa" as one media analyst said. We were tasked with reflecting this in the design and structure of every page.
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A serious daily newspaper for the East African region - the website had to be distinct from The Nation and yet share all the interactive features that we introduced to NMG's family of sites
Kenya's largest media company aims to become Africa's leading news provider. They asked us to reinvent their stable of sites including three newspapers, radio and TV.
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We designed a new website and logo for the Curtis Brown literary agency. The brief was to make them more relevant in the digital world by reflecting the dynamism of the agency itself.
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Insight wanted a smooth, clean and professional design that reflected their position in the market
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Representing the skills of their team was a key part of the brief
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We also produced a full-page press ad for Insight's marketing.
We designed the website for this respected London-based political consultancy, recently named the Consultancy of the Year by PR Week magazine.
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We simplified and brightened the front page, instituting a reverse 'L' shape to provide maximum space for selling inside. The skylines are now photo driven. The new logo, complete with speech bubble (Al Watan is renowned for their daring opinion pages) was designed by Saatchi out of Beirut.
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An inside news page: clearer separation of stories, more white space, meaningful hierarchy, numerous sidebars, better photo cropping and a new dynamic column style.
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An opinion page. Al Watan is renowned for their intelligent comment and opinion. We added another page of comment and instituted the usage of symbolic, illustrative photos and introduced author's photos (atop their very own plinth of color) to enliven the look to match the words.
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Sport front page, the back page of the first section. A new, colorful way to designate the most important stories in the section, a new picture driven chart style, better heirarchy, more professional cut-out usage, and, of course, the reverse "L" design.
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Inside sports page. Clearer organisation plus bolder story labels guide a reader around the page, more action filled photos, better use of color.
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Business front page, first page of the second section. More, and better use of charts and graphics every day. Immediate access to trends and key movers inside the "L" shaped top of the page.
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Front page of Life which incorporates Art, Culture, Society, Books, Music and Entertainment. Big, colorful main headlines, better use of pull quotes, exciting new story label and deck pairing, and better use of cutouts and photos.
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Inside life page. More visible column style, bigger and better cropped photos, more organized structure, clearer more colorful puzzles and a new cartoon style.
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Inside life page. Full page dedicated to a single story using dynamic color, simple photographs, better use of sidebars and secondary stories and a clear hierarchy.
The Story
Al Watan ("The Nation") has a history of being Saudi Arabia's most innovative newspaper. When it launched 10 years ago in Saudi, it changed the face of Arab press. In the past 10 years, the other newspapers in the country haven't so much evolved as tried to catch up with the innovations of Al Watan. The idea behind the our redesign was to push Al Watan 10 years ahead of the pack. Again.
The overall project was split into two parts. The first was technical and skills oriented. Our friends at Human Capital (especially Tim Ewington and Zadok Prescott) and Ryan spent more than two weeks helping with the transition from Quark to Indesign CS4 ME and training a large and relatively inexperienced design staff in both the new program and the basic design principles that underpin the basis of the new look (including the use of photography, color, structure, etc). The second was about finally introducing that new look, nurtured for months and put through severe editorial scrutiny, focus groups and print tests, to the world.
See the blog for more detail and images...
Saudi Arabia's most innovative newspaper wanted a complete creative relaunch. We overhauled the look, feel and structure of the paper and introduced a newly commissioned Arabic font.
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The front page: a bold new masthead, radical new style for skylines, much greater picture power and new six column front page
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New 5-brief package at the top, new color-coded page labelling, clearer organisation of packages, larger and more logical headlines plus a clear and simple seven column grid
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A big, and blue, new front page for the Business section, providing a greater emphasis on selling the stories inside the section and better packaging of stories on the front page.
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A cleaner, better organized and easier to create comment page. Note the stronger hierarchy and more effective use of page furniture.
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In sport, much more emphasis on being bold, with both photography and typography. A new, clear labelling style for each sport and cleaned up tables and match reports.
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Two examples of covers for Time Out, the new tabloid features section that we launched.
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The new television grid, organised in blocks by the hour
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A spread from the Time Out section
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The Story
The Gulf Times is one of the oldest and most important English language titles in the Gulf, chiefly serving the (very multinational) nation of Qatar. The owners made the decision to make a massive investment in a new print plant with increased colour capacity, a new web width and an ability to print new sections. To capitalise on this they wanted a complete redesign from top to toe, a new structure for the paper (in particular a new tabloid "GT 2" type section called Time Out) and new design software (Indesign).
We took several briefs from the managing editor, Neil Cook, during the months before the relaunch and worked up several different design options. Once the Board had selected their preferred look, we worked it right through the paper, creating styles and templates for all the pages from section fronts to TV listings and the weather.
Implementation took place over one hectic week in Doha during which the entire production staff had to learn inDesign (they had been used to Quark) and a completely new set of styles, while still producing the old paper. In the end, somewhat miraculously, the new look paper came out looking pretty good on March 1st 2009. The days that followed were probably the hardest as an exhausted staff got used to the new realities.
It was one of the most dramatic and -- in our view -- successful relaunches of a paper we had worked on. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and we hope to return to the Gulf often in the next few months and years.
The leading English language paper in Qatar asked us to work on a radical redesign of everything from fonts to column widths, new sections and a review of editorial workflow.
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The Saturday edition of the FT - when all the markets are closed - is a different beast than the utilitarian work-a-day weekday paper. The weekend version of the Financial Times has some of the best Arts comment and coverage in the world but it was hidden behind a black and white facade that screamed financial expertise not artistic know how. The decision was made to separate the weekend and weekday paper by going big, promoting the amazing content inside and not being afraid to talk proudly about the high quality arts, books and house and home coverage inside.
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The first two sections of the paper were combined to form a News/Companies hybrid. This sleek new product allowed the Life & Arts and House & Home sections to stand out more. The new Life & Arts masthead uses a brighter shade of purple and has more space to promote the best of the stories inside.
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Money is the consumer oriented tabloid insert in the Weekend edition. It was, like the rest of the paper, brightened up and restructured to work out pacing issues. The most difficult problem was the consistent huge ad on the front cover. We solved this issue by embracing its size and placing larger skylines above it.
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An example of using a more open grid with a column of white space on either side of the main story. Notice the better use of dropcaps, photograph shapes, and caption placement.
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The Weekend section is defined in large part by the powerful stable of columnists it employs. We commissioned full length photos of each of the columnists and promoted them to the top of the page to show off their talent and demonstrate their importance. The headlines were set left in three columns of space and in Benton Light.
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We reorganised the hierarchy of the pages, instituting a multi-layerd labelling system for the countless standing features that are peppered throughout the weekend paper.
Following our work on the weekday paper, we were hired to redesign the Financial Times's celebrated weekend edition. It required a completely different look and feel to the busy, news-driven daily paper.
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Our new front page is easier to produce, has greater on-the-street impact, makes better use of promotional space, has a new, regionalised briefing column, and uses modern, more legible fonts.
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The Monitor has the best supplements (all 10 of them) in Uganda and we redesigned them all. From the new daily magazine, M2 to Sunday Life to the colorful Score sport supplement, we sat with each editor and helped them completely remake their sections.
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Uganda has a burgeoning arts scene and needed a new way to present it. We produced a bombastic two page spread for Friday's M2 that gives the best of what's on that weekend and a succinct but visually exciting TV & Radio page.
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By adding more briefs to the news pages, we were able to keep the story count up without sacrificing the elegance of the page. We worked hard on the shapes of photographs - note the almost square photo in the before and the more exciting extreme vertical shape in the after.
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Page 2 is always a problem for every paper and the Monitor is no different. In part of our labelling crusade we introduced a more complete and clear index along with Uganda's first ever weather map (which Ryan wrote about for Good Magazine).
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With a fast growing stock market and a population obsessed with investing, the business pages needed a complete overhaul. We concentrated the stories and added a useful and clear databank listing all the information an investor might need.
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In a country where most sales come from street vendors, Saturday and Sunday editions need to be powerful, colorful and filled with the best of the best reporting. Our brief was to create a Saturday paper focusing on consumer themes and a Sunday paper that set the agenda for the week to come.
The Story
Background
Though one of more prosperous and democratically accountable countries in Africa, Uganda still suffers a degree of repression and corruption under the government of President Museveni. The Monitor is the single most trusted source of independent news and comment. Its editors face a constant barrage of Government harassment and legal proceedings. Our job was to help shore up its commercial position and guarantee its long term future as a voice of reform.
Strategic Review
We spent a significant amount of time in Kampala researching every facet of the paper and the market and came up with a range of recommendations including:
Distribution: We found a way to regionalise the paper using the current distribution network
Printing: We discovered a way to use more efficiently the Monitor's current press setup to achieve better use of colour along with the editionalising page one
Structure: We created Uganda's first daily magazine, M2, with a different theme, features and columnists each day
Positioning: With a new design and attitude we tried to inspire a more confident, polished and authoritative Monitor
Marketing: We suggested a raft of reader offers and value added giveaways and gave them the design tools to flag up these efforts
Design: We completed a total typographical and visual overhaul
Redesign
We first created a number of dummies and then worked with The Monitor team on the preferred option. We took responsibility for achieving buy-in from every section and department on the editorial floor. We created a style book and a layout system using InDesign templates. Finally we trained the production team and assisted them through the launch.
Uganda's leading independent title wanted a redesign that would emphasise its role as a feisty, intelligent voice in the national debate, combining impact with authority and style.
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Our redesign launched in April 2007 and runs mostly intact today. Here we want to concentrate on the key components that we think make our design exciting and different. To the left, see the new sidebar box style. The idea is that every good story has a back story.
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We think labelling is the hardest and most important part of newspaper design. We have spent many hours and many yards of wall space (we like to hang things up) perfecting them. We think we did pretty well with these. According to our research, readers tend to scan Companies & Markets pages quickly looking for particularly relevant items. We decided to help them by adding sector labels and two mini-decks to each story.
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Our research showed a dramatic jump in web traffic with each web cross reference that appeared in the paper. We redesigned the cross refs to be simpler to create, more useful and clearer.
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Before our redesign, columns always took a banner position, occupying the entire top part of the page. In the interest of vertical design (the previous design tended to break down into horizontal stripes), we stretched the columns and ran them down the length of the page. We also blacked up the columnist's name and added a big photo.
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The FT is particularly good at writing around a story, seeing it from all angles. We decided to make these 'packages' (high-value content) stand out on the page by adding thick black rules above and below the set of stories. We also added two layers of contextual headlines that act to further tie the pieces together.
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An example of how the packaging of stories can reduce the 'wedding-cake' effect of too many horizontal shapes on a page.
The Story
Our role
Ryan began working with Andy in late Decemeber of 2006 and collaborated with designers and editors throughout the FT during the 4 months leading up to the launch. We produced a full dummy in mid-Feburary, just a month and a half after starting design work. Ryan was intimately involved in the internal logistical implementation.
The Brief
The FT, more so than any other newspaper, is used as an everday business tool by its readers. The goal of this redesign was to make it quicker, more intuitive and more satisfying to use. Andy Davis, the Development Editor at the FT had a nice phrase for it--"breathable design". As you flip through the paper, you inhale information almost effortlessly. In an aesthetic sense, the FT wanted to reflect its modern international persona in the way it chose to present itself.
The Design
In order to achieve a more modern feel two FontBureau fonts, MillerDisplay (a beautiful serif headline face cut by Matthew Carter) and BentonSans (a heavy serious version of News Gothic) were adopted. There was a conscious decision to use both fonts in their full width to underscore the new concentration on space and clarity. A great deal of time was spent on making the navigation, story labelling and page hierarchy of the paper as clear as possible. Individual story labels were removed in favor of more informative "package labels" that called attention to the amazing scope of the FT by highlighting those subjects on which it writes more than one story. This introduced much needed space into the overall design and lended to the sense of in-page hierarchy. Varying Bold and Roman headline weights and the addition of tinted "background" boxes also allowed helped guide the reader through the paper while adding texture and life to the pink pages. In the name of readily accessible information, a two deck system was devised for allowing the most pertinent information to be available at a glance. In the interest of pace and diferentiation, the Business Life/Arts spread was moved to the back of the paper and given an airey look with strategic use of white space and larger photographs. The comment and letters pages meanwhile have again become the heart of the paper with a new woodcut and the reintroduction of the motto "Without fear or favour".
Press
The design was generally well-received with the Guardian calling it the "greatest change in a generation".
The Guardian
Evening Standard
Society of Newspaper Design
Interview in IFRA Magazine
Press Gazette
Design Week
POLIS - LSE Media Thinktank
Brand Republic (free reg required)
The Editors Weblog
FT Press Release
What the focus groups said
'Very clear, things jumped out at me'
'Simpler, more friendly on the eye, more tempted to sit down and read...somehow they've made it look shorter'
'Designed so it's easier for people to find what they're looking for'
'I did find it more attractive, more aesthetic...seems like it's got a bit more space...less claustrophobic...slightly warmer, more human'
The Financial Times that you see today all over the world is our design. Generally recognised as one of the world's leading quality newspapers, the paper has gone from strength to strength since the relaunch.
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A single story front page that trys to tread the fine line between a gaudy tabloid and a restrained quality.
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A fresh solution to the Page 2 problem: one main story and the front pages of all the other papers (plus short summaries of what is inside each of them).
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A celebrity page with a top ten.
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A comprehensive review of the reviews.
We designed Earlybird for a major London entrepreneur. The brief was a bold, colourful daily paper that delivered an editor's choice of syndicated news and features from other information sources.
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Frontpage of a bright, picture-led design focussing on sport, celebrity and consumer issues.
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An inside page. The design attempts to tell stories primarily utilising dramatic, colorful imagery.
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An example of a more traditional multi-story front page with each story pointing to a longer version inside.
A major UK regional company asked us to spice up their current titles with magazine style treatments, bright colours, bold cropping of photos and popular, youth-oriented design.
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Our rebrandng was based on the Southwark Playhouse venue - a dark, dirty and atmospheric arch under London Bridge. The website, logo, stationery, even theatre signage reflect this aesthetic. Above, the logo projected on the outside wall of the playhouse.
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Letterhead, compliment slips and mini business cards all printed on recycled, sustainable stock.
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The website makes use of the same dirty aesthetic with a dusty background and scratchy typography.
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As one of London's oldest fringe theatres, the playhouse has a remarkable history. We encouraged them to make more of it by using old lithographs throughout the site
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We also design and plan seasonal brochures and flyers for the playhouse. The playhouse is a haven for young theatre talent so we commissioned three talented young illustrators to intrepret each of the season's plays.
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In the brochure for the Winter 2007 season, we commissioned one collage artist, Sofia Skold, to illustrate the entire season.
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Winter 2008 is Southwark's 15th anniversary so we celebrated with a dramatic and colorful brochure using high quality photography from each of the shows.
With Tom Barette, we completely rebranded Southwark Playhouse, one of London's oldest and most respected fringe theatres. We continue to work on their marketing material.
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The aim was a cover that announced a serious current affairs magazine and a beautifully produced glossy that would survive a long shelf life in receptions and boardrooms around the world
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We used the meagre supply of photographs from Angola creatively and make the most of space, balance and typography inside the magazine.
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The Story
We produced a long list of recommendations - everything from a major rethink of content and sections, to paper quality, to the use of graphics and photographs. This led to a vacancy for a new editor, and we helped identify and interview the right candidate - Alex Bellos (of Guardian and FT fame).
Redesign
We then worked through our design ideas and completed a dummy that was approved by the publisher and the client.
Execution
We worked alongside the designers, picture editor, editor and publisher for the relaunch issue, helping to edit copy, write headlines and layout the pages.
Universo is Angola's leading English language title for the international community. We were engaged to help hire a new editor, reposition the title and do a complete redesign.
We are not just designers.
We are media doctors too.
Having the good fortune to have worked inside many highly successful media companies, we can often bring a fresh perspective to a problem.
Issues we specialise in include:
How to earn more revenue from a website- How to move towards a true hybrid business where print & web work together
- How to become an interactive publisher across all platforms
- How to earn more by removing price barriers
- And most important of all: how to tell a story and engage readers
In line with many, we see this decade as the climax of a media renaissance, with the next five to ten years being a tipping point in the long transition from print to digital.
In any review of any media business now you have to start by looking at the explosion of community websites, networked journalism, user- generated content and online video.
Unlike many, we see a future for print. Admittedly it will be different - but it will be a future nonetheless.
And everything we do is based on commercial reality and on a close understanding of costs and revenues and profitable publishing models.
Website, magazines, newspapers or all three.... we are constantly shaping & testing new ideas
Beyond running Shakeup Media itself, we have always had the ambition to create new businesses and nurture them through to long term profitability.
We do not have the luxury of a large development budget. This is probably a blessing in disguise for it means that everything we do has to be extremely lean and quick to produce revenue.
Apart from the fun (and possible future rewards) of doing this, we believe it keeps our feet on the ground. If we can understand first hand a little of how difficult it is to run a profitable media business, we hope to be better advisors to you.
What ideas are we playing with now?
Blatherskite.com - investigation, satire and gossip- Horoscopes.co.uk - daily, weekly and monthly horoscopes in text and video
- The Manual - creating a handmade, handwritten newspaper
Yes, there are other plans too but we're not counting our chickens and it's best not to talk about them until they are real.
We keep up with the latest theories, we read the experts and we listen to the industry leaders.
Between all this and working at the coalface we couldn't help but develop our own opinions about where media is heading. Below, a selection of our recent articles, talks, interviews and conference work (be warned, most of the links open in a new window).
A handmade, handwritten silk-screened newspaper experiment. Read more at themanualnewspaper.com and on the blog.
Ryan wrote a chapter (Rehearsing Democracy: Uganda and New Media) for Web Journalism: A New Form of Citizenship? to be published 2009.
Richard was asked by the Art Center in California to organise and moderate a conference on Disruptive Thinking in Barcelona.
Why the death of the newspaper has been greatly exaggerated.
The annals of annihilation are a notorious dossier of delusion. If we believed them men, redheads, career women, polar bears, handwriting and God would all be extinct by now. I believe that predicting the death of newspapers is just as misguided.
Apart from the fun of panicking one of the least popular professions in the pampered world, why are the obituarists of newspapers so confident? The answer is that they believe there is a better way of doing the job. I fear they misunderstand the job.
It is only surprisingly recently that analysts have studied the deeper ways newspapers function. Essentially they found this: papers release you from the boredom of yourself. Infinite choice means endless decisions. It's lonely. Option fatigue sets in. Newspapers thrive on being physical products offering only one choice, read it or chuck it.
They're a filter against the mind crushing weight of available information. They're still the most efficient rapid information-absorption machine that anyone has invented, with their sweeps of paper, graphics, colours, photos and typography easily outpacing TV, internet and radio. They're portable identities: even if you don't read a word people still feel good carrying the right paper under their arm (try doing that with a website). And at their best, they're beautiful. Take typographical design. People may not care that the T in the masthead took five years to perfect but they do respond emotionally to the aesthetic package.
So it's not surprising that print is still the world's biggest ad medium, that newspaper ad revenues have been up every year for the past four years, that global circ was up nearly 5% last year and that from Monrovia, where a one-man newsroom operates by writing stories on a street corner blackboard to Singapore where the Straits Times is now feeding increasingly off its citizens' stories and photos, newspapers are doing amazing and radical things.
The internet isn't destroying newspapers, it's changing them for the better. The aim was a cover that announced a serious current affairs magazine and a beautifully produced glossy that would survive a long shelf life in receptions and boardrooms around the world
Richard on why the death of the newspaper has been greatly exaggerated. The internet isn't destroying newspapers, it's changing them for the better.
Ryan on presidential design. We allow bad designers into the White House at our own peril.
Ryan on Uganda and climate change. It is a difficult proposition, drafting a weather map for a country that has never seen one.
Richard on free newspapers. We all read freesheets and devour news at no cost on the web but what would happen if all papers were free?
Journalism in the New Media Landscape, a presentation we did for Charlie Beckett's LSE-based media thinktank POLIS.
Richard on free newspapers. We all read freesheets and devour news at no cost on the web but what would happen if all papers were free?
Richard on the Telegraph. The most important point is that all types of journalism are a deep craft.
Shakeup Media
4th Floor, Greenhill House
90/93 Cowcross Street
EC1M 6BF
PHONE +44 (0) 7899 968 427
EMAIL richard@shakeupmedia.com
Richard Addis
PHONE +44 (0) 7899 968 427EMAIL richard (at) shakeupmedia.com
He has edited two national newspapers, The Express and The Globe and Mail, through periods of major change in two of the most competitive marketplaces in the world. He has also been deputy editor or executive/associate editor on The Daily Mail, The Sunday Telegraph, The Financial Times and The Evening Standard. His international experience includes working or consulting on newspapers in Canada, Africa, India and the Middle East. He has experience at many levels of newspapers from reporting and art directing to management and a seat on the board.
Ryan Bowman
PHONE +44 (0) 7816 284 609EMAIL ryan (at) shakeupmedia.com
He is a leading newspaper and website designer, recently described as a design phenomenon by the Society of Newspaper Design. His recent work on the Financial Times was widely praised and hailed by The Guardian as the most dramatic change in a generation. In the past few months he has completed work for Time Magazine, Curtis Brown literary agency, The Gulf Times newspaper, Johnson Press and The Southwark Playhouse. His recent article discussing the logos of the American presidential candidates received widespread coverage in the USA.