Mark Porter

Last week the Sport section of guardian.co.uk migrated to the new platform, and acquired the “new” (18-month-old) look. Just the latest rollout in our redesign and rebuild programme which began with Travel way back in late 2006. A few parts of the network are still in the pipeline, but it’s finally starting to feel like the heavy lifting will soon be over. Read the rest of this entry »

Fascinating post at Hoefler & Fere-Jones about the ampersand. As you can see, I’m a big fan…

Last Saturday the FT Weekend was “refreshed” (a word I hate, incidentally. It drives me mad when editors are so afraid of alienating readers that they announce changes as a good thing but also try to pretend they haven’t really changed anything. Readers – especially FT readers – are not that stupid).

Saturday is the the only sunny day in a pretty bleak week for the rest of the quality market so it’s not surprising that the FT wants a bit more of the action. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s always difficult when your children grow up and go out to make their own way in the world. There are many years to go before my real-life children are ready for that, but another of my babies has struck out on its own – Guardian Egyptian is now available for licensing. Read the rest of this entry »

I came across this image following a trail of comments on the latest execrable US Esquire cover. This old classic came up in a conversation recently and I was amazed to find that there are people out there who’ve never seen it. So for anyone who missed it the first (or second or third) time, here’s one of the all-time great magazine covers

As I hoped Chico Amaral from Cases Associats has sent me a few PDFs of recent Mirror pages. The football section in particular is interesting. I’ll be keeping an eye on this… Read the rest of this entry »

The nominations for this year’s D&AD awards have been published. Despite all the problems with D&AD as a forum for editorial design, I still take it seriously because I really believe it is the toughest and most rigorous awards I’ve ever entered or judged. Since our triumph of two years ago, the Guardian has not entered much, though I’m pleased to see that our architecture specials from last year are in the book, as they were my first (uncomfortable) experience of being an editor. But I’m really thrilled to learn that Público, which I redesigned last year in collaboration with Esterson Associates, has two in-books for complete sections and one for covers. It may seem strange for a holder of the mythical black pencil to get excited about seeing something in the book, but even though Público is the most serious and influential newspaper in Portugal, the project was on a very different scale to the Guardian. The brilliant in-house Art Director, Sonia Matos, does an amazing job on two sections a day and five weeklies with a very limited team, so for Público to be in the book along with Monocle (for example) is an incredible achievement — felicitações Sonia!

Even though the blog is just over a week old, there will be a temporary lull while I’m on a short media-free holiday.

Shocking news: Britain’s red-top tabloids have discovered design! The first signs are in the Daily Mirror, which has been working with Barcelona’s Cases Associats (full disclosure: I know the Cases team and have done some talks for them and their clients). They seem to be rolling the redesign out gradually, and so far only the “Your Life” section (and “Mania” at the weekend) have had the full treatment. Sport has a new look with a lot of rough edges. And the news pages are still old-school Mirror with some rationalised typography and a scattering of the kind of gizmos we’ve come to expect from Cases. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m way late with this, but worth noting the interactive floorplans at wallpaper.com. You may quibble with the interaction (or the value of an architect’s drawing 720 pixels wide) but the simple combination of drawings and photography really enriches the experience for architecture fans, and I havent seen it done anywhere else.