In 2007, in Spanish newsstands, there appeared, in the
course of less than a week, two new journalistic proposals:
Público, a new masthead backed by Mediapro, and the new image of La Vanguardia. Público targets a modern, left-wing readership, with little time to read and used to the free newspapers. For this reason, they chose a light layout, breaking up the information, and with a design that facilitates interrupted reading. On the other hand, La Vanguardia “changes, but doesn’t change”. With this slogan, they were indicating that they were not undertaking a profound change, but rather a “touch
up”, above all esthetic, taking advantage of the fact that
the new presses they acquired obliged them to change
from a Berliner format to tabloid. This article analyzes
the formal characteristics of the two new formats and
also gives a brief account of the remodeling done by the
newspaper El País subsequent to that of La Vanguardia
and Público.
KEY WORDS: La Vanguardia; Público; newspapers;
newspaper morphology; content analysis; typography;
layout; color; image; computer graphics.
PALABRAS CLAVE: La Vanguardia; Público; diarios;
morfología del diario; análisis de contenido; tipografía;
maqueta; color; imagen; infografía
