New work: Internazionale
October 2nd, 2009
The new Internazionale design is published today.
This magazine has built a very loyal following since it was founded 16 years ago. Readers are passionately engaged with the title (it has 25,000 Facebook fans) and circulation is growing fast. The content is an eclectic collection of some of the best writing, photography and cartoons from all over the world (a lot comes from the best US, British and European newspapers and magazines, but there’s also a great deal from many other sources from Brazil to Indonesia). They take the translation and copy-editing very seriously, and the result is not just a press review, but a collection of the very best short- and long-form journalism with a suprisingly coherent voice. And they are now commissioning a lot of their own material too.
I was asked to “polish, refresh, update, rationalise, and make it more elegant”.
I’ve been working on this project (ably assisted by Richard Turley) for most of this year. We went through a few iterations before arriving at this design and I’m very happy with the finished product. The real breakthrough was when we started working with Kai Bernau’s Lyon text font, which we first saw in the New York Times magazine. Italian news magazines tend to be a little hyperactive, with lots of different typefaces, colours and graphic elements. So the concept here was to move away from that with a very stripped-down but readable design, in the mode of the New Yorker or The Economist. I took this as a challenge to see if it could work in just one font, and the Lyon worked brilliantly on everything, from headlines to text to infographics.
The only thing I would have done differently is the cover; Internazionale were understandably nervous about changing a winning formula, and we deferred to their anxieties by retaining the colour scheme, the curved panel at the top, and the old logo (although it was subtly redrawn by Paul Barnes). I would have preferred to change the cover more but I understand the reluctance to mess with a magazine that sells mainly on newsstands, and whose circulation has grown by 27% in the last year! In a case like this you have to accept that the client knows best.
A selection of pages follows (click all images to enlarge). There’s also a few photos from the launch here. And as I mentioned before, I’ll be talking about the redesign at the Internazionale conference in Ferrara on Sunday.
Comment by Paul Pensom — October 2, 2009 @ 12:37 pm
It’s beautiful Mark. A wonderful sense of airiness and a lightness of tone and colour to the pages. Thanks for showing it.
Pingback by Mark Porter – Internazionale « Lieve — October 2, 2009 @ 4:57 pm
[...] dell’Internazionale, scoprendo con maniacale curiosità da nerd la nuova veste grafica di Mark Porter (quello del Guardian…). La prima impressione a caldo è che è bello ma senza sforzo… [...]
Comment by Savio M. — October 2, 2009 @ 10:03 pm
BRAVO, MR. PORTER!
It’s a really good work, a lightness second the lesson of Italo Calvino.
Some elements remind me the first Internationale graphics…so it’s warm and beatiful lost inside the reading…
Pingback by LS graphic design » Internazionale magazine has a new layout — October 5, 2009 @ 11:44 am
[...] was chosen to redesign the layout for the first time: you can read about the 10 months process on his blog. As an Internazionale subscriber for more than 10 years I must say I am happy with the new look (in [...]
Comment by Demetrio Mancini — October 6, 2009 @ 9:55 pm
Very nice job Mark. I was in Ferrara on Sunday, the conference was so much interesting, both for graphic designers or just readers. Only one question: where are finished the books and cd’s covers on the review’s pages?
Comment by Thomas Magnum — October 7, 2009 @ 10:26 am
Your work on Internazionale is great. Thanks for making the best italian magazine even better.
Comment by markporter — October 7, 2009 @ 10:30 am
Demetrio: a few people have asked me this. I felt that the culture pages were over-complicated and hard to navigate, and that the book and CD covers were adding to the clutter. Most of the decisions on this project were aiming for simplicity and clarity
Comment by Savio Mantes — October 7, 2009 @ 3:44 pm
BRAVO, MR. PORTER! I see only today the magazine with new graphics…I think that the sense of clarity and lightness reaches its peak; but for the cover I think that the used of a font like Lyon is weak, powerless for a magazine(probably for a newspapers is very good) unlike the previous font Nimbus sans or Benton sans expresses in a shouting, fast and straight the issues of the magazine.
Comment by mattia donati — October 12, 2009 @ 11:56 am
Nice work, maybe too much serious. I don’t know, probably it’s normal, Internazionale is growing, now it’s an adult. As reader I’m sad, as designer happy for the new layout. In any case good work
Pingback by Mark Porter e la grafica editoriale « Café des Ignorants — October 12, 2009 @ 1:36 pm
[...] suo notebook online potete leggere un’appassionata review di come il progetto è nato e si è sviluppato. Riporto un breve passaggio che spiega [...]
Pingback by florianfromm.de » Internazionale – by Marc Porter (Guardian) — October 27, 2009 @ 9:15 am
[...] Der Artdirector des Guardian hat das neue Design des italienischen Nachrichtenmagazins “Internaionale” überarbeitet. Mehr Informationen auf seinem Blog. [...]
Comment by tina+ — January 14, 2010 @ 9:43 pm
Few months passed by since the new layout has been published, and when I open my weekly copy of Internazionale I feel home. The magazine grew up and indeed it is more elegant, but it did not loose its soul. Thank you Mark, great job!
Pingback by Mark Porter » Blog Archive » Personal news — January 30, 2010 @ 10:29 pm
[...] sensitive to this than we may have been in the pre-internet age. And magazines like The Week (and Internazionale) are living proof that text and images from a wide variety of sources can coexist if they share a [...]
Comment by Alessandro Pascoli — February 1, 2010 @ 10:16 am
I appreciate this project as well as some of your other projects.
However it reminds me “Solidarietà Internazionale”, another italian magazine that sometimes has been published with “Internazionale” as a promotion.
My studio designed it in December 2008: do you know our project?
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http://www.sezioneaurea.com/2009/01/cipsi-onlus/solidarieta-internazionale-redesign/
Comment by markporter — February 1, 2010 @ 11:28 am
Alessandro: no Id never seen your magazine. But there was an earlier iteration of the Internazinale redesign which looked even more like it, so at least we didnt go with that!