The Guardian has unveiled a new global homepage and a redesigned app which combine mobile-first UX with print-inspired art direction. The changes rolled out today after a year-long design, development, and testing process, and Guardian Media Group’s executive creative director Alex Breuer called it a “pivotal moment” for the media brand’s design. It’s the first time The Guardian has substantially changed its website since it introduced its responsive site ten years ago. With 75% of its digital audience now visiting on their phones, the redesign focuses on mobile, and some of the previous desktop designs have been simplified to better serve that audience. Breuer says the design work started with the app, because of The Guardian’s reader-funded revenue model and the importance of its most loyal readers. The app currently has one million daily active users and the average app user clocks up 15 times more pageviews than the average web user. The new Guardian app The new app has a dedicated puzzles section with a playful new illustrative identity, a newly-designed in-app audio player for the platform’s podcasts and a My Guardian tab where readers can personalise their feed, by following specific topics or individual reporters. Both the app and the homepage – which will appear across the website in the US, UK, Australia and Europe – are designed to feel less overwhelming and help readers access the sections they want. A masthead carousel appears at the top of both the homepage and the app’s home screen, with an eclectic range of stories that provide alternatives to the main news of the day. Meanwhile, different sections have different lay-outs and typographic weights to help readers find what they’re interested in, and skip past what they’re not. “The Guardian readership is a very broad group of people – there are really multiple Guardians for different people in different moments in their lives,” Breuer explains. “With these changes I think we are closer to answering those different needs more effectively than we were able to do before.” Breuer said that he sat down with editor-in-chief Kath Viner at the beginning of the process, and they spoke about which parts of the Guardian portfolio – across print and digital – best reflected the breadth and scope of its journalism. They both agreed it was the physical newspaper, where design elements signposted different kinds of stories, and readers could literally pull it apart to focus on the bits they were most interested in – or “disaggregate” as Breuer puts it. The new Guardian homepage The team set about trying to recreate this “layering” in the digital platforms, which had previously functioned like an index of stories with a set, and somewhat staid, hierarchy. “Our website was a bit like a newspaper where we made you look at every single page,” Breuer says. “There was very little light and shade.” The new designs give editors and designers much more flexibility in how they present the homepage, thematic sections, and even individual stories. For example, the new system allows pictures to be displayed in different formats – moving away from the traditional landscape approach – and articles can be published without a picture if there is nothing suitable or engaging to use. There are also options to embed video more creatively, including vertical video. “Previously the use of images was defined not by what the image was, but by the space it was fitting in,” Breuer says. “It’s much more dynamic now.” Breuer believes this level of control and design discretion, which echoes the craft involved in page lay-outs in print design’s heyday, is a significant step in The Guardian’s visual history. “It’s quite a pivotal moment,” he says. ”When news websites started, you basically just dragged a bunch of stories into a CMS and it displayed them the way it always displays them. “Now, from minute to minute, we can say, oh that picture is really good, let’s make it bigger, or let’s use some looping video there because that’s going to tell the story better. There is such a rich array of options. “For the first time we get a level of art direction across our digital experience that has been the preserve of print.” The Guardian’s new digital designs for its app and homepage These options do, Breuer concedes, make the site “slightly more complex” and he says that a major part of the project was developing the “tooling and responsive patterns” so that changes made by editors are reflected properly across the website and app. During the design process, Breuer says the team drew on a broad range of references, from other news organisations like the BBC and The New York Times, to aggregators like Apple News, streaming services like Spotify and Amazon Prime, and retail sites. They also looked at social media, in particular Instagram. Breuer says at one stage the team considered an infinite feed where every story was presented in the same size and format. They decided against that because they felt The Guardian, and its curation, is more of a brand than the social platforms, which take a back seat as containers for users’ content. Another challenge was to create a richer experience for readers while not reinventing the wheel – so for example the new audio app borrows familiar elements from other music and podcast providers. Breuer knows, as a designer and user, that change can feel disorienting, but he is excited to hear what people make of the new designs. “I love the design literacy of Guardian readers – it’s a real compliment that they care so much,” he says. “We always take time to respond to people who email us and explain what we’re trying to do as best we can. “And if something really doesn’t work, we will change it. With a complex content model like the one we have, that’s so dynamic, it will always challenge the design in a way that we didn’t expect.” The new Guardian app The Guardian’s new digital designs for its app and homepage