The Guardian's Layout and Design

‘The Guardian’, originally known as the ‘Manchester Guardian’, was founded in 1821 by John Edward Taylor who was a member of a non-conformist group.  However, it wasn’t until 1872 when C.P Scott became edition of ‘the Guardian’ that he transformed the paper into being nationally recognised. This remains consistent to the present day. ‘The Guardian’ is traditionally Left-Wing which means that the paper is anti-conservative and supports Liberalism views.

‘The Guardian’ has a target audience of both men and women and the average ages of readers are between the ages 45-54 which shows that a more mature audience is drawn to the paper. Despite appealing to both sexes, statistics show that the male audience prefer to read ‘the Guardian’. Stereotypically people who have professions such as: businessmen, bankers, teachers etc. are attracted to ‘the Guardian’ and therefore are people of Upper and Middle class (ABC1C2). This is repeatedly shown through the paper’s choice of advertisements, language and content.

Newspapers are gradually becoming more renowned for being able to express a person’s social class and even aspects of their personality through the layout and style of a newspaper.  For example, ‘The Sun’ deliberately conveys itself as a cheap, affordable tabloid with a garish colour scheme and tacky puns because this is what meets the sun’s audience who are placed between ABC1 and C2DE social class. Since ‘the Guardian’ is targeted at people of a higher social class, the layout must reflect this also.

‘The Guardian’ is distinct from other newspapers available to the public because of its complex, organisational layout. Unlike tabloid newspapers, ‘the Guardian’ refrains from using garish, striking colours which are usually used to attract a reader’s attention. Instead, the paper uses a well thought out colour scheme of blue and green.  ‘The Guardian’ invested in three new printing facilities which were able to produce this colour scheme whereas usually newspapers are only able to print in block colours in certain sections. 

‘The Guardian’ also decided to change the style of the paper which meant converting the current broadsheet to a Berliner or ‘midi’ format. A Berliner format is roughly 18.5 × 12.4 inches and is slightly taller and marginally wider than the typical tabloid format; and is also narrower and shorter than the usual broadsheet.

Priced at £1.20, ‘the Guardian’ is one of the more expensive papers that are available to the public. Therefore, the readers want ‘the Guardian’ to convey the fact that the paper is more expensive through its new design. ‘The Guardian’ therefore, also uses the design of the paper as a way of justifying charging £1.20 because the paper looks upper class which immediately gives the impression that the content within the paper is going to be of an upper class standard. This new design not only satisfies current readers of ‘the Guardian’, but can also allure new readers into deciding to purchase this paper. A recent readership figure of 1,198,000 people per day indicates that the design has achieved this purpose to attract people globally.