Portugal, that other country that used to sell itself as “more than you can imagine” (today it’s “Europe’s West Coast”), is home to the world’s best designed newspaper, i. Short for informação, i launched in 2009 to critical acclaim, and the newspaper has just been judged the World’s Best-Designed Newspaper by the Society for News Design.
The judges declared that “many publications we saw are clearly operating at the top of their game, and have been tenacious and intelligent enough to emerge stronger from the economic battering of the last few years. But Portugal’s daily newspaper, i, stood out for its ability to take the best of the visual language of newspapers, magazines and other publications and create something new that is more than the sum of its parts. It’s compact. It’s fresh. It’s consistent, yet full of surprises.”
The newspaper feels and reads more like a magazine, sized 250 x 345 mm, than a newspaper, and is also saddle-stitched. The judges felt its format supports “the kind of flexibility that lets it focus on hard news one day and features the next” and that “paper delivers traditional newspaper content with new, engaging presentation.”
The six-day-a-week paper obviously values good design and the judges liked the fact that the designers 
considered how opposing pages worked together, even if the content weren’t related. The paper was complimented on its structure, fonts, use of colour and info graphics and headlines.
Social media and the web are rapidly changing how readers engage with content. It was quite insightful, then, when the judges noted “we found colour on every page, yet it is used purposefully, with smart pacing. It’s as though the designers are using a highlighter to clue the reader in to what’s important. One judge called this ‘print search optimisation.'”
Read the full story on BizCommunity.com