A PRISA newspaper, a launch design and a first editor.

El País means “The Country”, and the paper has carried that short title since its opening issue. English Wikipedia says El País was founded in May 1976 by a team at the Spanish media group PRISA that included Jesús de Polanco, José Ortega Spottorno and Carlos Mendo, and that it was first published on 4 May 1976. PRISA has owned the paper since that launch, and its headquarters and central newsroom are in Madrid, with a presence in other Spanish cities. English Wikipedia describes it as a Spanish-language daily based in the capital.

The paper had a designed look from the start. English and Spanish Wikipedia both say El País was designed by Reinhard Gade and Julio Alonso. Spanish Wikipedia adds that the newspaper’s logotype has used the typeface Clarendon since the founding, citing the Spanish designer Enric Satué’s 2007 book on typography in art, published by Siruela. Clarendon is a slab-bracketed serif with heavy serifs.

The first editor was Juan Luis Cebrián, who, English Wikipedia says, held the post until 1988 and came to El País from the Madrid daily Informaciones. The paper’s later editors include Soledad Gallego-Díaz, appointed in 2018, and Jan Martínez Ahrens, editor since June 2025, according to the same article.

The page itself was built on restraint. English Wikipedia describes the appearance of El País as marked by sobriety in both content and look: the bulk of its pages are set in five columns, arranged in a neat and clear manner with distinct journalistic sections, and photographs and graphics play a supporting role to the written word. The same article says the newspaper kept the same design from its founding until the end of 2007 with little change, and that for much of that time it used only black-and-white photographs, while colour photography and more varied layouts arrived later, mainly in the supplements.

Times Roman for three decades, then Majerit.

The body type stayed put for a long time. English and Spanish Wikipedia say El País used Times Roman from its founding until the end of 2007. Times Roman is the serif that Stanley Morison developed for the London newspaper The Times, which, as a 2011 analysis on the Seville journalism course blog Diagramación en prensa notes, first appeared in that paper on 3 October 1932. The same blog post, by Mónica Bautista Fernández and dated 5 December 2011, says El País used Times Roman for 31 years.

The redesign came in the autumn of 2007. English Wikipedia says the paper’s format was revamped on 21 October 2007, with changes to the printed paper and to its presence online. Its historical motto, “Diario independiente de la mañana” (independent morning daily), was replaced with “El periódico global en español” (the global newspaper in Spanish). Two changes reached the type directly. The title in the header gained its acute accent, so that the nameplate now reads “País” with the accent in place, and Times Roman gave way to Majerit, a specially commissioned serif.

Diagramación en prensa names the designer of Majerit as the Portuguese type designer Mario Feliciano. The post describes Majerit as a wider face than Times Roman and says that Feliciano adjusted details during its making so that it suited the paper’s press, its ink and its newsprint. It reports that the head of design at El País, Javier López, and the paper’s art director, David García, presented the new typeface as more modern and easier to read.

The supplements changed too. The 2011 post places the new type within a complete renewal of the paper’s image in 2007, and it links the change to the paper’s press, its printing quality, its ink, its paper and its use of colour. The same post says that the Sunday supplement Domingo moved its headlines from a typeface called Madrid to Arnhem, and its text from Miller to Utopia.

A Clarendon title, an accent and a commissioned serif.

A newspaper can change its typefaces without touching its name. English Wikipedia says the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong broadsheet founded in 1903, was given new fonts in a facelift on 26 March 2007, and that a redesign in 2011 set its headlines in Farnham and Amplitude, its body text in Utopia and its section headers in Freight. The title on the front page stayed the same through both changes.

The name itself can also change. English Wikipedia says The Straits Times, founded in Singapore on 15 July 1845 as The Straits Times and Singapore Journal of Commerce, was renamed The Shonan Times on 20 February 1942, and then appeared as The Syonan Times, the Syonan Sinbun from 8 December 1942 and the Syonan Shimbun from 8 December 1943, before the earlier title returned. When reading a newspaper’s identity, look at how long its title has stayed fixed, which typefaces set its headlines and text, and when those faces were last changed.

Two words, one accent and a paper that reaches past Spain.

The title is the constant. El País has used the same two words since 4 May 1976, set in a Clarendon logotype according to Spanish Wikipedia, and the redesign of 21 October 2007 changed the title only by adding the accent over the i.

The paper also grew beyond print. Spanish Wikipedia says El País went online on 4 May 1996 with an edition called El País Digital, and that on 18 November 2002 it began charging for access to the news content of its digital edition. English Wikipedia says that since October 2001 an English-language supplement of El País had been included in the Spanish version of the International Herald Tribune, and that in 1989 El País took part in creating a shared network of information resources with La Repubblica in Italy and Le Monde in France.

Editions abroad followed. English Wikipedia says El País produces an America edition with sub-editions for Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Argentina, translates a selection of its articles into English, and launched a US edition, El País US, in May 2024, with a newsroom covering cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston.

For a design guide, El País shows how a newspaper can keep a plain slab-serif title for decades, change its body type once with a commissioned face fitted to its own press and paper, and let a single accent mark the moment of change. Compare Le Monde, the Paris daily that joined El País in the 1989 information network, or The Guardian, a British daily with its own commissioned type. For this guide we use sand, ink blue and black with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep El País’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.