Three former Telegraph journalists and a new London paper in 1986.

The Independent is a London title that began as a printed morning paper and now appears online. English Wikipedia says its opening issue was published on 7 October 1986, in broadsheet format, produced by the company Newspaper Publishing plc and created by Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover and Matthew Symonds, all three former journalists at The Daily Telegraph. The same article says Marcus Sieff was the chairman of Newspaper Publishing at the start and that Whittam Smith took control of the paper. Press Gazette, in a timeline by Dominic Ponsford dated 12 February 2016, gives the same month and the same three founders.

The launch was rehearsed. BBC News, reporting on 12 February 2016, spoke to Mark Urban, who wrote the paper’s opening front page as a young reporter. He told the BBC that journalists turned up “with typewriters”, and that for four weeks before the launch date there were dummy runs every day. English Wikipedia says the paper went on sale with the advertising slogan “It is. Are you?”.

The house grew a Sunday sister and then moved east. Press Gazette’s timeline says The Independent on Sunday was launched in January 1990, edited by Glover. It says Whittam Smith and Symonds left the paper in August 1994, when Ian Hargreaves became editor, and that in December 1994 the paper moved from City Road to Canary Wharf. In August 2000, the same timeline says, it moved again, to Marsh Wall in London Docklands. English Wikipedia adds that from November 2008 production moved to Northcliffe House in Kensington, the headquarters of Associated Newspapers, while the two groups kept their editorial, management and commercial operations separate.

Ownership passed through several hands in the paper’s opening decade. Press Gazette says that in March 1995 Newspaper Publishing was restructured, with Mirror Group and Tony O’Reilly’s Independent News & Media becoming joint owners, and that in March 1998 Independent News & Media took full control. English Wikipedia says the Spanish group Prisa, the publisher of El País, also held a smaller stake after the 1995 restructuring. Editors changed in the same years: Andrew Marr in May 1996 and Simon Kelner in May 1998, according to Press Gazette.

Two sizes in 2003, a Barcelona redesign in 2005, full colour in 2008.

The paper changed its size in 2003. The Guardian, in a report by Ciar Byrne dated 30 September 2003, said a tabloid-size Independent had been launched that day in the area inside the M25, giving readers the choice of buying the same daily in two sizes. It carried exactly the same stories as the broadsheet, the report said, but many of them sat on different pages and the pictures were smaller, apart from some full-page portrait photographs. Kelner told Sky News that morning, as quoted there, that the paper intended to roll the smaller edition out to other commuter areas soon.

The paper called the smaller size the compact. English Wikipedia says the word was chosen to set the edition apart from the style of reporting associated with British tabloids. The broadsheet then wound down in stages. Press Gazette’s timeline says the Saturday paper went tabloid in January 2004, and that the whole paper went tabloid in May 2004; English Wikipedia dates the last weekday broadsheet to 14 May 2004. The Independent on Sunday followed in October 2005, according to the same timeline.

A full redesign of the compact followed. The Guardian, in a report by Stephen Brook dated 12 April 2005, said the paper had been redesigned by Cases and Associates, a consultancy from Barcelona. The typeface was changed throughout, with a mix of serif and sans serif: Sun as the serif headline face, Whitney as the sans serif headline face, and a serif called Benton for body copy. The number of columns for body text rose from six to seven. The old Review section was folded into the main paper under the title Life and Culture, and the front page gained an index summarising four stories inside. Kelner, by then editor-in-chief, told readers in a letter quoted by the report that the paper was “modern in appearance and more logical in structure”.

Colour came next. The Guardian, in a report by Oliver Luft dated 23 September 2008, said the paper had gone full colour, using new presses in Oldham, Watford, Cardonald near Glasgow and Belfast. The editor, Roger Alton, introduced a colour-coding system to ease navigation between sections, the report said, and added new headline and labelling typefaces, while the body type stayed the same. The daily second section, Extra, which Press Gazette dates to April 2006, was replaced by a supplement called Independent Life, with a different theme on each weekday.

A one-word title, two sizes and a page measured in seven 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.

A new owner in 2010 and a title that left print in 2016.

The owners changed again in 2010. The Guardian, in a report by Stephen Brook and James Robinson dated 25 March 2010, said Independent News & Media had sold The Independent and The Independent on Sunday to Independent Print Limited, a company set up by Alexander Lebedev to publish the titles, and that his son Evgeny Lebedev was to be its chairman. English Wikipedia says the paper was relaunched with another redesign on 20 April 2010, with smaller headlines and a pull-out section called Viewspaper for comment and features. A cut-price sister title, the i, followed in October 2010, according to Press Gazette.

Print ended in 2016 and the title carried on online. BBC News reported on 12 February 2016 that The Independent and The Independent on Sunday would stop their print editions in March, leaving only the online edition, and that the owner, ESI Media, would sell the i to Johnston Press. The last printed Independent on Sunday appeared on 20 March 2016 and the last printed Independent on Saturday 26 March 2016, the BBC said. English Wikipedia says the site launched a Spanish-language edition, Independent en Español, in September 2020, and that Geordie Greig became editor-in-chief in January 2023.

The design history has named hands. English Wikipedia says the launch design was produced by Carroll, Dempsey and Thirkell, after a commission from the cartoonist Nicholas Garland, and that Michael Crozier, executive editor for design and pictures from before the launch until 1994, designed and put the opening edition into production. Later changes can each be dated: the compact in 2003, the Barcelona redesign and seven-column page in 2005, colour-coded sections in 2008 and smaller headlines in 2010.

Through all of it the name stayed one word with an article. The format went from broadsheet to compact to screen, the owners from Newspaper Publishing to Independent News & Media to the Lebedev family’s company, and the type was replaced in 2005, while the title stayed the same.

For a design guide, The Independent shows how a newspaper can run two sizes side by side before settling on one, rebuild its whole type system around a narrower page and then move its title from paper to screen without changing its name. Compare The Times, the London daily that followed it into a smaller format, or The Guardian, a London daily with its own commissioned type. For this guide we use red, slate and black with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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