The Kyiv Post has changed its look over the years, reflecting evolving tastes in newspaper design.
As Ukraine’s Global Voice celebrates its 25th year, we offer five front pages that reflect our changing look. There’s only so much that can be done with a newspaper’s look and some elements remain constant.
The Kyiv Post, in honor of its 24th birthday on Oct. 18, 2019, rolled out its first print design change since 2008.
We hired Anton Ekle, a former Kyiv Post designer, to give us the new look. So far, the response has been positive — people tell us the look is leaner and cleaner, brighter and lighter. It is definitely less cluttered than before. But we’d be happy to hear your opinion as well.
We also asked Ekle to describe the changes he made and why. His goal was to make the paper easier to put together during production and more attractive to readers.
Here’s what he did:
Front page
“The old cover was clustered with ads around the logo and thus needed rearrangement,” Ekle said. “The teasers of content did not have a fixed place on a page. So I gave the top row for this task.”
Also, he said, “the first page was filled with a lot of color from both ads and editorial material. From a reader’s perspective, it was complicated to grasp the hierarchy at first glance. This issue was fixed by moving all ads from the top of the page and getting rid of colored rectangles and headlines. The color scheme consists of the Kyiv Post’s wine-red, black and grey lines. The graphical elements are minimized to lines, light shadow and typography itself.”
Other changes
He also made the header of the pages smaller, lighter and more consistent with sponsor logos.
And he changed the secondary font for headlines, subtitles, photos, small articles and infographics from Vectora Pro to Proxima Nova, because the latter font “has far more possibilities in both big and small sizes and good readability in a very small size.” It also complements other existing fonts.
Ekle also made other “minor tweaks in structure,” such as putting technical publishing information in one place, all on page 2, and getting rid of other “unnecessary features.
He also simplified feature teasers and improved sponsor integration to make it more consistent with editorial layout while clearly visible.
