Brief
As part of my third year course, I was tasked with creating a newspaper or journal for an already existing brand. I challenged myself to exceed the brief by choosing an ambitious brand, and create a flexible and contemporary design system for a newspaper.
Outcome
Choosing to expand the Alexandra Palace branding, the result of this project is a fresh, exciting newspaper that showcases news from the local community, the many areas and events of the Palace, all whilst combining an effective use of infographics and excellent typographic detail.
Year
2026
Client
Student project
Approaches
Editorial
Sketching
Microtypography
Design systems
Branding
Mindmapping
After landing on a chosen brand to develop into a printed newspaper, I begun brainstorming titles that were fitting for the Alexandra Palace's newspaper. Names are inspired by the location of the iconic music venue, its history and common names and nicknames associated with the venue. I would eventually settle for 'Palace Post', a masthead title thats snappy and understood easily by a wide audience.
Research
In the next phase of my process, I looked at a great example of a modern, well-designed and respected newspaper – 'The Guardian', specifically its' sport section. I looked at this spread in particular, and highlighted the newspaper's use of texture and wide variety of type styles. From my research, I intend on using a similar approach to a design system and use of texture to create an effective newspaper.
Logo sketching
A key part of creating an identity for the newspaper was to create a convincing, memorable masthead and logo. The masthead should visually represent the Palace in some way, and have some association with the Palace's current branding.
Several experiments were made, such as using elements from the Main Hall's famous stained glass window – but such visuals are too detailed for a finely printed newspaper. For the final iterations, I gravitated towards using the Palace's custom typeface 'Palace Display' and current logo, combining to create a simple, yet effective masthead.
Layout sketching
Having looked at a wide variety of newspaper layouts and design systems, I begun by sketching potential layouts for the newspaper, inspired by layouts I's previously looked at. In this stage, I also considered the potential content to fit for each page. This stage helped to form a more refined idea of what the newspaper was to be.
Re-creating an identity
Having visited the venue several times over the course of my design process, I took direct inspiration from designs from around the Palace. Such as the use of the venue's logo and custom typeface used for entrance signage. I was also fascinated to learn that the venue adopts its own custom wayfinding system of arrows – to which I captured, and digitally rendered into a vector graphic. The arrows are used as bullet points and for jump-to's in the newspaper's design system.
Main section
After several iterations, the final newspaper design was sent to print on actual newsprint where it can exist as an actual physical product. The newspaper's front page displays the biggest recent and upcoming events at the venue – whilst the backpage begins the sports section of the newspaper, a typical trope of a traditional UK newspaper.
Inside, the newspaper is sorted into several sections based on the many areas of interest at the Alexandra Palace, such as the 'Theatre' and 'The Great Hall'. The overall project is a success and proves a good example that the venue could adopt a quarterly print-journal to showcase its' many events, highlights and relevant local news articles.
Pullout section
Inspired by a typical newspaper trope, a pullout section was considered. It departs from the newspaper's typical design style – the content of the pullout section focusing entirely on the venue's upcoming Summer concert series.
