The Times, again

A week in and it's clear the redesign of The Times was a small-ish project that did some important cleaning up but was never intended to revolutionise the presentation of this oldest of newspapers. Which, to be fair, was all that was claimed of the work before its launch. But it's still disappointing isn't it? I would have liked to see it do something a little more spectacular to prove the tabloid format can work outside it's traditional UK Sun/Mirror market.

There are some nice touches: the use of bullet-pointed standfirsts to every lead story successfully mimics web design (and therefore the Guardian), and Gotham is a beautiful modern sans that is, as Neville Brody has said, becoming the new Helvetica. I've warmed to the Times Modern font now, although on the masthead itself it feels a bit clumsy, in caps and at that scale reminding me of an early Emigré design, Matrix. But none of these features address the central problem, that the pages still feels squashed compared to the Guardian.

Next year, new presses will bring full colour across the whole paper, giving a chance to further improve navigation and broaden colour options on tint boxes. But overall this has been a missed opportunity, it feels to me that the newspaper should been braver and allowed Brody and team more scope. Meanwhile, the Guardian remains the single UK daily designed for the future.