Excentric and classic – beautiful news!
Weekendavisen hired me in 2018 as a creative director. The weekly newspaper, one of the oldest in the world, was in dire need of a redesign to bridge the gap between print and digital design.
With the help of type designer Henrik Kubel from A2-TYPE in London, master engraver Martin Mörck, and a superb in-house design team, we managed to give the paper a total makeover with an elegant, surprising, and long lasting look.
I led the design project from start to finish, and by 2020, the print paper won the World’s Best Designed Newspaper award.
The redesign of the newspaper was inspired by the work of its past head designers. The newspaper’s title, crest, and font style show their influence. The new design also encourages strong storytelling within the company, aiding new workflows and design traditions internally.
The custom fonts created by Henrik Kubel have helped to establish a strong identity for the brand, enabling it to stand out in a media landscape where homogeneity is commonplace. The standout typeface, readability, space-saving attributes, and exceptional art direction ensured that the new design was a success on both digital and print platforms. Moreover, new icons by Jørgen Stamp included in the design work as little “jazz riffs” alongside the classic and strict font, which works particularly well in text-heavy articles.
The culture section has been upgraded from a tabloid style to a broadsheet format.
Henrik Kubel was responsible for designing various variations of the headline font which integrate an eccentric and classic look. He also included special alphabet features that ads little surprises in the headlines, connecting two letters. Additionally, Illustrator Sine Jensen has created several unique and tactile lead writer portraits.
