Glorious Creative styles weekly paper for the North West

Manchester start-up consultancy Glorious Creative has won the five-figure design project to create what is claimed to be the UK’s first regional weekly newspaper.

The as-yet-unnamed paper, running under the working title of The Examiner, will be launched this Spring by managing director Nick Jaspan and editor Bob Waterhouse, who have raised almost £1m in funding.

Glorious Creative will be responsible for all elements of the paper’s design, including the masthead, fonts, grid system and colour palettes. The consultancy won the work in a four-way pitch against The Chase, AWA Advertising and Marketing and Axis Graphic Design.

Jaspan says the Manchester-based paper will publish as a 96-page full-colour title, in the standard tabloid format. A Berliner format was considered, but would have led to difficulties with the printing presses and prevented last minute advertising bookings, he says. The design will be that of a ‘serious-looking newspaper’, with little reliance on promotions, says Glorious Creative managing partner Scott McCubbin.

The title will target an AB demographic, delivering what Jaspan terms ‘broadsheet journalism in a tabloid format’. Covering the North West, from Carlisle to north Staffordshire and from north Wales to the High Peaks of Derbyshire, the paper is intended as an addition to the daily nationals read by its target readership. Its focus on regional – as opposed to local – news is unique outside Scotland, claims Jaspan. The title will offer extensive arts and business coverage, which he believes is lacking in the region.

‘The rhythm of a weekly is more reflective. I would hope to grab our readers for 20 or 30 minutes each week. And we can’t be too parochial in our coverage, as that would reinforce readers’ notions of the regional media, which they currently don’t buy,’ Jaspan explains.

Glorious Creative partners Tom Shaughnessy and Mark Ross are former creative directors of The Chase.

Jaspan and former Guardian journalist Waterhouse previously set up publishing company Newsco, which they sold to Regional Independent Media in 1999. The new publishing venture is provisionally called Jas House Hard.

North West Weekly Newspaper

• Glorious Creative will design the masthead, select fonts, create the master grid and choose colour palettes for the newspaper; it will also design the supplements and on-line edition

• The paper will use a tabloid format

• Its name is awaiting trademark and patent approval; launch scheduled for spring

• £1m launch funding raised from private investors and institutions

• It will employ approximately 16 journalists

Left to right/ Scott McCubbin, Tom Shaughnessy and Mark Ross of Glorious Creative