Quietly, almost as if it doesn’t want anybody to notice, India’s oldest and largest business paper,The Economic Times, has undergone a redesign. On top is the front page of the launch issue of the paper in its new avatar (Monday, 14 February 2011) and below is the paper from exactly a week before.
The pagination of the paper from The Times of India stable, which turns 50 this year, remains more or less the same. There are no new pages or sections. In other words, old wine in slick new bottle is enough to ward off the design challenge posed by the Hindustan Times‘ business paper, Mint.
The key changes are in the colour of the masthead from blue to black; new headline fonts; a tighter body font taking it closer towards the body font of ToI; and plenty of icons and logos, even in headlines. Keen observers of design will notice subtle shades of inspiration from designs of The Guardian, The Observer and International Herald Tribune.
The top-secret redesign, which has been subtly introduced sans announcement, has reportedly been executed by Itu Chaudhuri Associates, which designed the original template for Open magazine and was behind some of India’s best book covers in the late 1990s, including Arundhati Roy‘s Booker Prize winning God of Small of Things.
Images: courtesy The Economic Times
Also read: Good heavens, another Mario Garcia redesign
Yet another paper redesigned by Mario Garcia
How come Mario Garcia didn’t redesign this one?
IJR 
ET must be the worst designed English daily in India. One never knows which is the lead story, where one story ends and the next starts, no prioritization of stories thru diff font sizes. The newspaper doesnt help the reader – either to navigate or to zero in on the days top stories. With budget around, just wish they do away with the funny caricaturing they do of the FM. So juvenile. With WC cricket on, this time it can be a deadly combo !! They seem to forget that this daily is for people who have least time at their disposal !
What’s the font they’re using under the masthead?
Redesign? Just changing fonts is not redesign… But what else can we expect from a newspaper which does not even have a full time Art Director?