The National – the leading English-language news brand in the Middle East – has revealed the initial iterations of its brand redesign across its digital and print platforms, including its desktop and mobile website, smartphone application, print daily newspaper, videos, podcasts, and social media.
“We’ve been working hard to create a more user-friendly experience that better reflects our brand and values,” said Wael Goma, tech lead at The National on a LinkedIn post.
After months of behind-the-scenes work, the first versions of the brand’s redesigned website and rebuilt apps were rolled out over the past two weeks, with the new-look newspaper in print revealed over the mid-July weekend.
Nick Donaldson, creative director at The National, said: “I’m really proud of what we’ve achieved in relatively short space of time, trying to balance the evolution of our fledgling brand without losing the feel of who we are. We tried to keep the essence of The National while moving the paper closer to the website design rather than the other way round, a first for us …”.
“… we tried to achieve this by mirroring the classical, elegant feel we hopefully achieved on the website and app by retaining the web-friendly fonts necessary for online, with a bit of pushing and pulling for print. As well as the increased amount of white space, lighter touch and using the same new logo/masthead. There are echoes of one within the other,” Nick added on a public post on LinkedIn.
The leadership team consisting The National’s editor in chief, Mina AlOraibi; head of digital strategy, Alex Gubbay; managing editor, Laura Koot; head of platforms, Stephen Nelmes; creative director Nick Donaldson; as well as deputy creative director, Deepak Fernandez; designer Talib Jariwala; graphic designer Gerald Du; lead UX, UI, and product designer Ahmad Shoaib Hussain; and a team of product managers, developers, testers, and analytics experts were responsible for the rollout of the brand redesign.
Ananda Shakespeare, a subscriber of The National for nearly a decade, said, “It’s always great to see a newspaper brand refreshing their design; it shows they care about the reader and keeping the brand contemporary. I think making the print more like the digital is an interesting approach – I did notice the difference in my morning paper. The extra white space around the masthead on the front page is quite pleasing.”
Commenting on the continued brand redesign, head of digital strategy at The National, Alex Gubbay, shared on LinkedIn, “Lots still to do as ever, with more enhancements and significant iterations to come. But I’m so proud of everyone across our teams who pulled together to deliver this exciting step change across our digital products… and indeed a new-look newspaper too.”
