TAKEAWAY: Moscovskiye Novosti has received an award from The European Newspaper Awards—the first Russian newspaper to achieve such honor. We take a look back at the evolution of a design.
The award winning pages of Moscovskiye Novosti: the first Russian newspaper to receive recognition from The European Newspaper Award competition
It is great news and a little bit of history for my friends at Moscow’s Moskovskiye Novosti newspaper, one that we have had the honor of working with as it was brought back in circulation in 2011.
Moskovskiye Novosti has continued to evolve, and it is that evolution, from a text driven traditional newspaper, to a dazzling magazine-like format, that has caught the attention of the judges in the 15th annual The European Newspaper Award competition.
This is the first time a Russian newspaper has been recognized at The European Newspaper Award as Moskovskiye Novosti has received a judges’ special recognition for its very magazine-like design, and for a two page infographic report.
I asked Ilya Ruderman, Deputy Editor-in-Chief - Art Director, RIA Novosti, how he and the team felt about this accolade:
We began redesigning the newspaper back in 2011 with the active involvement of renowned newspaper and magazine designer Mario Garcia. One of the key decisions was to include large, complex infographics as a distinctive element in the revamped newspaper, and Mikhail Simakov began working on this with his team.
The new art director, Anton Stepanov, led the next effort to redesigning the paper, and in the fall of 2012 the new layout impressed everyone with its innovative front and back full cover spread and unusual graphics. Alongside infographics, images also play an important role in the newspaper layout. Anton Marast and Timofei Yarzhambek cope perfectly with the fast pace of a daily newspaper. As its art director, of course I was very happy to receive this unique award, but I am still never satisfied because you can always find things that need to be improved. We are still working on the graphics and the layout, and have recently introduced an English-language insert The Moscow News which also posed a few challenges in terms of design. Working on the newspaper is very interesting and I think this is one of the best things about MN.
Anton Stepanov, Art Director, Moskovskiye Novosti & The Moscow News, had this to add:
Over the last two years, this newspaper has gone a long way, from a traditional newspaper format to a daily magazine. This transformation would not have been possible without the new concept of the newspaper proposed by the editorial team. The new structure of the newspaper content has to be presented in a different way. As a result, we use unconventional formats for a newspaper. Photos and illustrations play a very important role – they form a core of additional information, while the content is structured around it.
Members of the MN team include: Mikhail Lebedev, who leads the layout team; Alexei Ptitsyn, Konstantin Kakovkin, Anton Maryinsky and team leader, Mikhail Simakov-infographics; Natalya Gvozdeva, Anastasia Yarullina **and **Marina Laba—designers.
A little bit of history
Evolution of a design: The front page on the left, very text driven and conservative was the original editorial team’s idea of what the new Moscovskiye Novosti should look like. Common sense prevailed and a more contemporary looked made it out on that first day of the new MN in 2011
The new Moscovskiye Novosti paved the way for the MN of today: more informational graphics, more generous use of white space through inside pages. The stage was set for this new magazine-style MN that is an award winner and a crowd pleaser
Evolution of a design: the contemporary look in the newspaper format gave way to today’s magazine-style smaller format.
As I have visited with the Moskovskiye Novosti team in the past year, I was very happy to see the major evolution of this newspaper, and kept thinking of how difficult it was for me and my team to get the original editorial team to advance beyond a very text driven newspaper where visuals were NOT welcome at all.
Goes to show that publications and projects follow stages of evolution, and that the people involved have a lot to do with what happens: the Moskovskiye Novosti of today, the award winning, visually surprising daily, would have shocked the original editorial team, and that was, gasp, less than three years ago.
Congratulations to the Moscovskiye Novosti team for this honor and for pushing for innovation daily.
Moscovskiye Novosti facts
Moscovskiye Novosti is published in Moscow and has a circulation of 31,800 copies daily, 98,000 on weekends. The newspaper is published in
Russian, with an English section once a week. The newspaper employs 15 journalists and four layouters.
Previously in the blog about Moskovskiye Novosti
How users engage with the media quartet
http://www.garciamedia.com/blog/articles/phow_users_engage_with_the_media_quartet_p
Today is the day Moscovskiye Novosti comeback premieres
http://garciamedia.com/blog/articles/today_is_the_day_moscovskiye_novostis_comeback_premieres/
In Russia: rebirth of a legendary iconic newspaper Moscovskiye Novosti
Russia report 2: Designing Moscovskiye Novosti across the platforms
http://garciamedia.com/blog/articles/russia_report_2_designing_moscovskiye_novosti_across_the_platforms