by Ole Munk; published 11 March 2009
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Is it possible to let two different newspapers share the same design guidelines, be edited and layouted by one staff, and yet make them look different? Most people would probably answer “no” to this question and when I spontaneously gave the opposite response, approached as I was - with a feeler - in December 2007 by editors-in-chief Sverker Emanuelsson and AnnaKarin Lith, I was not at all certain that I was right. It sounded like an interesting challenge, however, and definitely worth a try.

The reason for this unconventional request was the fact that two Swedish local papers, Hallandsposten in Halmstad and Hallands Nyheter in Falkenberg/Varberg, had now become part of the same media corporation (Stampen) and had been ordered to save money, like everybody else in this once flourishing industry. One of the owner’s ideas for cutting down expenses was to merge the two papers’ copy-editing and layouting functions and create one shared ”page factory”. However, as we are talking about two publications with high esteem, long histories, and very different self perceptions - as well as two papers which have for years been competing for the title “Halland’s leading daily” - just making the suggestion was asking for trouble. Our experiments were therefore initiated in the deepest secrecy.

Different basic typographies: Not a practical solution
The initial ambition was to cause minimum annoyance to devoted HP and HN readers by keeping the basic typography different in the two titles. In other words, retaining Taz and Gulliver in Hallandsposten and Poynter Gothic and Charter in Hallands Nyheter, and simply duplicate all templates so that staffers would never have to worry about whether they were working on a page in HP or HN. But even though we did manage to fine-tune the typefaces to a degree where 95 percent of all text would use the same amount of space, no matter if it was set with HP’s or HN’s typography, the remaining five percent would force editors to use precious time checking each and every page for overset text, etc.
It seemed obvious that the marginal goodwill which we might gain from readers by retaining the typographical differences would not justify such an inconvenience to the staff, not to mention the increased risk of errors. So, even though both papers had undergone major redesigns not long ago, we now realized that we would have to drag their 150,000+ daily readers through yet another lot of changes.
In other words, our new goal was to create a basic design which the two papers could share - while, at the same time, providing each title with some kind of individual characteristics that would both distinguish it from its neighbour and draw lines back to the visual identity which the paper had managed to establish over the years.

Skills and experience
You would probably agree that such a task contains more contradictions and paradoxes than anybody would ever need. And certainly, it would have been impossible to solve if we had not had the good fortune to team up with two extremely skillful and experienced staffers, one from each paper. Nisse Nilsson had been a key player in Hallands Nyheter’s recent redesign and Hallandsposten’s Ingemar Magnusson is an old friend of Ribergaard & Munk, having worked with us on two earlier occasions (the 2004 redesign and the 2007 change to tabloid - check it out here). Both were pretty sceptical about the prospects, affected also by the less-than-positive response from their colleagues once the management’s plans were revealed, but nevertheless Nisse and Ingemar engaged in the project with the energy and enthusiasm of true professionals.

Our starting point: Hallandsposten’s design
Hallandsposten’s redesign had been very well received while HN readers were not quite so amused. Hallands Nyheter has a strong tradition for design and visual communication but it seemed as if the paper had not managed to adjust 100 percent to the tabloid format. Consequently, the three of us agreed that it would make sense to use Hallandsposten’s existing design as a starting point and allow for more substantial changes in the HN look. But after eighteen months of experience with the tabloid format, we saw room for improvement in the HP design as well … and even if our wish had been to simply copy the HP design onto Hallands Nyheter (which it wasn’t), ”political” reasons would prevent us from doing so. The HN staff would probably have started a revolution if Hallands Nyheter had been ordered to take over Hallandsposten’s design.

Gulliver: The world’s most legible typeface
Next question: Exactly how much of the typography and graphic elements would have to be brand new, and how much could be ”recycled”?
As both papers already had excellent body type, the idea of forcing their entire combined audience to get used to new lettershapes, when it was in fact only necessary to bother half of them, seemed plain stupid. And as Hallandsposten had invested a lot of time and money in getting ”the world’s most legible typeface”, Gulliver, we decided to get rid of Charter (which Hallands Nyheter had been using for less than a year, anyway) and make it Gulliver all over.

Soho Gothic: The headline face of the ”10”s?
In my initial analysis of the two papers’ design (and perhaps struck by a momentary bout of ”simplifiosis”), I had been characterizing HN’s Poynter Gothic as the newspaper headline face of the 90s and HP’s Taz as its ”00”s counterpart. Logically enough, HN editor Lars Grimbeck now dared me to come up with the headline face of the ”10”s for the new design.
Well, there may of course be many answers to this request but I think Soho Gothic is a pretty good shot. Sebastian Lester’s sans serif was released in the summer of 2008 and is, as far as I know, the first typeface ever to be marketed with an animated video commercial (watch it here). The way Monotype is promoting Soho Gothic suggests that I am not the only person who has high expectations for this typeface. In any case, experimenting with Soho Gothic convinced us that it possesses the same qualities as both Poynter and Taz (a lot of personality when used big, and perfect legibility when used small) while at the same time providing both papers with a more contemporary, if not futuristic, look.

In the end, the “span of differences” between Hallandsposten’s and Hallands Nyheter’s design was narrowed down to three main areas: a) The colour coding, b) page headers and other graphic elements used for navigation, including the nameplate and frontpage promo area, plus c) specific pages based on fixed templates: op-ed pages, names pages, etc.

A new weekend supplement
HN editor-in-chief AnnaKarin Lith had come to Falkenberg from Dalarnas Tidningar where she had created a very successful weekend supplement (Pralin). Her new ambition was to provide HP and HN with a similar product. We started sketching on this in October and during the following months, the new publication gradually evolved as the result of a teamwork between an editorial group consisting of Ulrika Ahlberg, Lotta Bergström, and Tina Claesson, and R&M, represented by Hanne Groenlund and me. The name ”h” (which stands for both ”Halland” and ”helg”, the Swedish word for weekend), the use of Guardian Egyptian, and the clear yellow colour - all Hanne’s ideas - gave the new magazine a strong visual identity. So strong, in fact, that the advertising bureau chose to expose the magazine’s design - and the designer (like many times before, yours truly gets all the credit. But the idea of presenting a newspaper designer as a painter was NOT mine) - in their marketing campaign.
You can download page examples from ”h” here.

We chose to exploit the design possibilities of the oval logotype with absolutely no sense of shame, most prominently with the creation of a completely new typeface designed by the man behind Guardian Egyptian, Christian Schwartz, on the basis of my sketches. The ”logotype initials” font is being used for drop caps as well as for promos and other marketing purposes:

Positive response
The new design of Hallandsposten and Hallands Nyheter was launched 11 February 2009, and two and a half weeks later, the 62,000 subscribers received “h … as in Halland” for the first time. The readers of both papers have responded very positively to the changes and everyone seems excited about the new weekend supplement (including advertisers, even in these rough economical times).
As intended, the common design facilitates not only the work flow in the new ”page factory” but also the sharing of material, such as national, international, and business news which are, on most days, identical in the two papers.

So what remains, I guess, is only to repeat my initial question: Do these two papers look different, even if their basic design is actually the same? You be the judge, please.