The Guardian on-line look and content plans unveiled

The Guardian creative editor Mark Porter has outlined plans to reshape the newspaper’s on-line look and content over the next 18 months.

Speaking after last Thursday’s relaunch of the newspaper’s homepage, Porter says that the newly launched functional format will be applied to all Guardian sites over the coming months. The same design, honed by the paper’s in-house design team, was initially trialled with the redesign of The Guardian’s travel site in November.

The site was received with mixed enthusiasm last week, prompting Porter to explain that the main objective was to improve functionality rather than aesthetics. It comes, he says, in response to a need for a design that can evolve with the day’s breaking news, rather than the more conventional single, static homepage template.

Looking to the future, Porter says the site has the flexibility to respond to the growing need for multimedia alternatives such as audio and video news broadcasts to complement the more conventional text-based on-line content. Picture galleries also look set to grow in prominence.

Neville Brody helped to create the original, graphically styled design of <a href=”http.www. guardianunlimited.co.uk”target=”_blank”>www. guardianunlimited.co.uk</a>, but Brody’s relationship with the paper came to an end when he joined The Times to relaunch its print and on-line formats at the end of last year.