Mark Boulton Design

De Standaard (The Standard) is a Flemish daily newspaper with a rich history dating back to 1918. Mark Boulton Design were hired, on the back of Mark’s considerable work in the field of grid system and typographic design for the web, to redesign the online newspaper standaard.be

The task was considerable. Take a brand with a website that is successful, but alienated from the core readership. Together with making it more usable, Mark Boulton Design had to work with editors and journalists to ensure the workflow and sheer amount of content, could be not only catered for, but presented in the best way possible for the newspaper and the user.

Design a system, not a website

We couldn't design every single page or template for a site of this scale. But we could design a kit of parts that the newspaper could use in the coming years to mould and adapt to the content requirements.

A carefully crafted grid system underpins a flexible typographic structure leveraging new web fonts available in Microsoft Vista. Bespoke iconography provides cues for users, together with characterful pictographic weather symbols. All of this comes together as a perfect example of how the interface of a website says more about a brand than the logo or masthead ever could in isolation. We let the user interface tell the brand story.

Responsibilities: Branding, Information Architecture, Concept Development, Graphic Design and Art Direction.