Eugenio Torelli Viollier’s paper and the house on Via Solferino.

The name means “Evening Courier”. English Wikipedia says Corriere della Sera was first published in Milan on Sunday, 5 March 1876, by Eugenio Torelli Viollier, and that its masthead has remained unchanged since that first edition. Il Post, writing on 24 September 2014, put it more briefly: the Corriere has existed since March 1876.

The paper soon added titles of its own. English Wikipedia says that in 1899 it began a weekly illustrated supplement, La Domenica del Corriere, “the Sunday of the Courier”, and that in 1908 it began a supplement for children, Corriere dei Piccoli, “the Courier of the Little Ones”, which carried comic strips. The same article says Luigi Albertini was editor and co-owner of the paper from 1900 to 1925.

The paper is also known by its street. English Wikipedia says its headquarters have been in the same buildings since the beginning of the twentieth century, which is why it is popularly called “the Via Solferino newspaper”. English Wikipedia’s article on la Repubblica, for its part, uses the phrase “the via Solferino publishing group” for the Corriere’s owners.

One page of the paper takes its name from type. English Wikipedia says the Terza pagina, the “third page” given over to culture, used to carry a lead article called the Elzeviro, named after the Elzevir typeface in which it was originally set. Over the years, the article says, that slot published contributions from the paper’s editors and from novelists, poets and journalists.

From broadsheet to Berliner, with the nameplate kept bold.

A major change to the printed paper came in 2014. English Wikipedia says that on 24 September 2014 Corriere della Sera changed from its broadsheet format to the Berliner format. Il Post reported the change on the same day, under the headline “Com’è fatto il nuovo Corriere della Sera”, saying the paper was on sale from that morning with new graphics and a smaller format.

Il Post gave the measurements. The new Corriere, it said, was 31 by 45 centimetres, having lost about five centimetres in both width and height. The graphics followed the previous version fairly closely, the report said, but were less dense, with content set out more tidily across the six columns available on the page.

The front page kept its anchor. Il Post wrote that the name of the paper in bold remained clearly prominent at the top, while the band beneath it, once light blue, had grown larger and now carried pointers to articles inside along with two advertising boxes at its sides. The lead photograph took up more room, the report said, following an approach that La Stampa of Turin had used for years after moving from a sheet-sized page to a smaller one.

Inside, the report said, the paper kept its classic division into subject areas such as politics, foreign news, crime and entertainment, with the option of replacing them with less traditional sections on particular occasions. The main photographs carried longer captions written by the journalists themselves, and there were columns, a readers’ letters page and infographics. Il Post added that the Corriere had redesigned its website in March 2014 with graphics very different from the earlier version, and that Ferruccio de Bortoli, editor from 1997 to 2003 and again from 2009, had announced at the end of July that he would leave the editorship in the spring of 2015.

A bold nameplate, a band beneath it and six columns.

A newspaper’s title can stay fixed while the pages beneath it change. English Wikipedia says the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, first published in Frankfurt on 1 November 1949, altered its traditional layout on 5 October 2007 to carry colour photographs on the front page and replaced blackletter type everywhere except the nameplate. German Wikipedia says the lettering of that title, designed by Regina May, has stayed typographically unchanged, and that in October 2011 the paper’s website gave up its own logo for the printed Fraktur head.

A change of page size works the same way. English Wikipedia says The Sydney Morning Herald, a Sydney title since 1831, moved its weekday paper from broadsheet to compact with effect from March 2013, following The Times in London, and printed its Saturday edition as a broadsheet for the last time on 22 February 2014. The name at the top, fixed since 1842, carried across to the smaller sheet. When reading a newspaper’s identity, look at which parts of the masthead have stayed unchanged, which parts of the page were redrawn, and the dates on which each change was made.

From the Crespi family to RCS and Urbano Cairo.

The paper is published by a group that carries its name. English Wikipedia says the Crespi family, owners of Corriere della Sera, sold a share to the group now called RCS MediaGroup in the 1960s, and that the company was later listed on the Italian stock exchange. Il Post, in a report dated 16 July 2016, gave the group’s full name as Rizzoli-Corriere della Sera Media Group, and said it published both Corriere della Sera and the sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport.

That report described the change of control. Before the contest, Il Post said, ownership of the group had entered a phase of change after the exit of John Elkann and FCA from among its shareholders, which had left the company without a single coherent majority. It said shareholders in RCS had until 5 p.m. on Friday, 15 July 2016 to choose between two offers: a public exchange offer from the businessman Urbano Cairo, already the publisher and owner of the television channel La7 and of the Cairo Communication group, and a public purchase offer from investors represented by International Media Holding, led by the financier Andrea Bonomi. When the offers closed, Il Post said, Cairo’s offer had drawn more acceptances, making him the main shareholder of RCS and the new publisher of Corriere della Sera, ahead of the rival group led by Bonomi. Official figures were due on 21 July, the report added.

The paper’s weekly supplements continue around the daily. English Wikipedia says the magazine Sette was launched in September 1987, and that today the paper comes with the business weekly L’Economia on Mondays and with Sette on Thursdays.

For a design guide, Corriere della Sera shows how a daily can keep a single nameplate across a long history while changing the page beneath it, from the broadsheet to the smaller Berliner sheet of 2014. Compare the Rome daily in our la Repubblica brand guidelines, the Paris daily in our Le Monde brand guidelines and the London daily in our The Guardian brand guidelines. For this guide we use stone, blue and courier black with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Corriere della Sera’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.