When I first applied at POLITICO back in 2011, I was told they were very close to completing a redesign of the newspaper. That redesign wound up stretching on until September 2013. Between those two points I went from newly hired design to design director, which gave me a lot of say in the redesign. In the end, we didn't get an extreme redesign — this process was more of an aggressive refresh of POLITICO.

When the refreshed POLITICO launched in September 2013, the paper had all new fonts. Gone were typefaces that come preinstalled on your computer like Century and Franklin. We replaced them with fonts like Chronicle, Escrow and Helvetica Neue. (Yes, Helvetica — I know.)

Overall, the goal of this redesign was to create the framework for a cleaner, more modern newspaper. Even after the redesign was introduced, that process continued to evolve.


Here's the first day of the redesign. There are a few things that would change shortly after, like the way refers were presented at the bottom of the page. Different configures for those refers were introduced.

For comparison, here's what the last edition of POLITICO looked like before the redesign.