Any brand to survive the aging process must look at the design component and it is more true for the print media with its dwindling circulation (world wide, though it is a little different story in India). We have seen various newspapers experimenting with its mast and a little about the page layouts, but Hindustan Times has undergone a complete metamorphosis with its more smart-looking designing.
In a word of competing brands and mushrooming 'me-too' products, the design emerges as the clear differentiator that adds value to the money one spends.
HT has acknowledged the presence of competition and numerous other access points for a prospective reader to get information and news and entertainment, and has clearly won over the hearts of the youthful India with its make over.
The mast set in lower case in a strong Swiss expanded type font, it is Vonness, in fact, in double color, stands our strongly, and the famous Florida based designer Mario Garcia has done an excellent job in carrying the design elements across various other pull outs and add-ons.
The clever use of color to highlight select words in the headlines or other text adds zing to the entire process of going through the newspaper. These 'hooks' indeed provide an entirely new experience of scanning a newspaper for a reader who is spending less and less time with it...approximately 14 minutes on an average.
It is however would be interesting to closely watch its circulation stats as to how the youthful design is impacting the readership.
CJ
