DeMorgen : Birdseye Design

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Redesigning an Online Newspaper

Late 2017, publishinghouse ‘De Persgroep’ decided to revamp their newspaper ‘DeMorgen’ (The morning‘), both the paper and online version. We were asked to design the online version.

Together with the digital editorial team and the project lead, we developed a grid layout in which all components were given a distinctive place: news, advertisements, live events, culture, etc. With that grid as a guide, we created designs for all the different pages, page types types and their components.

Laying out the grid

Creating designs for an online publication is never easy; there is some much content fighting for the reader’s attention. We quickly realised our objective was to create a design system that services that attention without creating unnecessary clutter or information overload.

We tested several layout options, all based on a 3 or 4-column grid system that distributes articles, components, call-to-actions and advertisements clearly over the page. The existing typography was also updated and we created a set of clear and crisp icons.

Culture & Magazine

Certain sections of the newspaper, most notably the culture section and the weekly ‘Magazine’, we’re taken out of the grid system to give more room to photography and images.

To show events in ‘real-time’, we created a page that enables the editors to keep adding short updates as the events of the day unfold so the reader gets a chronological accounting of those events.

The shop page

Readability and Scanability

Certain sections, in particular the television and weather pages, offer a lot of content that had to be presented clearly, legibly and scannably, so that the reader gets a clear picture of the content and finds what he / she is looking for.