Key Members of the Le Monde Redesign Team Tell FTM What They Have Tried to Achieve, and How, Including Why They Didn’t Touch the Logo - It Was The One Feature of the Paper Not Broken

Philip M. Stone November 8, 2005

For all the changes in Monday’s relaunch of Le Monde -- larger pictures, shorter news stories, longer feature stories – one aspect, the logo, was not touched. “It is one of the world’s most recognized logos so it was left well alone,” said Ally Palmer, the lead design consultant.

But editorially just about everything else has changed. In a wide-ranging e-mail interview, Palmer and Eric Azan, the technical chief editor at Le Monde and part of the Vivaldi Group charged with working on the new editorial concept, have explained in detail what they have tried to achieve.

“The challenge,” according to Azan, was “to get new young readers (25 –35), males and females – the ones that get their news from the Internet and the free press.”

To do that, much has changed. “We want shorter stories in the news part, longer in the features part. We want larger pictures – no more small photos. Color is everywhere we can. The old Monde was rather dull, grey and hard to read. The new Monde will be lively, modern, easy to read,” Azan said.  The newspaper is now divided into three sections – current events, comments and analysis, and lifestyle.

For Ally Palmer, partner in the Palmer Watson Newspaper design firm in Scotland, it was a particular coup to be chosen by such a renowned French newspaper to aid in its redesign. He explained that Le Monde is recognized as an iconic newspaper known throughout the world.  “It is in such an institution that there is some advantage for them to work with a studio that would approach the job with slightly less reverence.”

Palmer believes the biggest change readers will see is in the use of pictures, particularly on the front page where previously a picture was seldom seen.

“The first thing that readers will notice on the front page will be the stronger use of photography and the reduction in the number of items. This is not an issue of less content but bolder (editing) decisions. You are saying to the reader that these are the stories that matter today, these are the issues you should know about.”

A news digest on the back page provides a more comprehensive news service and also attentions readers to the popular lemonde.fr web site that has about three million unique visitors a month.

Palmer said that the old Le Monde tried to provide both news value as well as a menu of content on its front page, “but within the Berliner format could do neither entirely successfully.”

Palmer is convinced that the use of a “dominant” picture on the front page “is clearly a major step. The success of this strategy will depend entirely on the judicious choice of images to convey value and meaning to readers. We are confident this can be done.”

One of the major decisions that had to be taken concerned the grid and what would work best for editorial and advertising.  “In the end we used a combination of five and six column grids that allow the lead stories to have more prominence while accommodating a six-column grid for advertising.

For typography Matthew Carter created a unique version of his Rocky headline type that allow for Le Monde’s tradition of longer and more descriptive headlines. “It has the elegance for which Le Monde is renowned, and it also impacts on the page,” Palmer said

The big question, of course, is whether it is all enough to put an end to what has really been a disastrous past couple of years for Le Monde. Azan explained, that Le Monde’s circulation problems “are connected to the success of the Internet, the rise of the free press and the vanishing of newsstands, especially in Paris. Poor design did not help. The book (a very critical best seller published last year describing the way management ran the newspaper) did not help.”

That all resulted in a 6% circulation decline in 2004, down to 380,812 daily followed by a further drop this year to just 324, 401, allowing Le Figaro to just overtake it as France’s best selling national newspaper.

Le Monde has just raised €65 million from Lagardere, the French media and industrial conglomerate and Spain’s Grupo  Prisa, which publishes Madrid’s  prestigious El Pais newspaper  -- each taking about 17% of the company. The new money was needed to handle debts of more than €100 million, with losses in the past two years of  €77 million, including €50 million last year alone.

When Le Figaro relaunched last month it was said to have seen an initial 15% spurt in circulation, but reports now say the paper is holding onto just about a 5% gain.

One of the most perplexing questions is why French national newspapers do so poorly when compared with others throughout Europe. Recognizing that the French are great magazine readers, Azan believes part of Le Monde’s problem was that it did not develop weekly magazines (TV, home, women, cars, real estate, weekend etc.) as national newspapers in other European countries have done.

Le Monde, considered one of the world’s most prestigious titles, was founded in December, 1944, just four months after the liberation of Paris. It last underwent a redesign in 1995.

Three Palmer Watson newspaper redesigns – The Scotsman, the European, and The Herald (Glasgow) have won titles as the World’s Best Designed Newspapers by the Society of News Design.

No doubt they hope Le Monde will be number four.

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