Newsletters are an example of where editorial, product and marketing overlap at The Economist.
Before the start of this project project only a few of the newsletters had a visual identity, so it posed a challenge on how to advertise them together and separately in an engaging and clear way.
Inspiration for the newsletter identities came from The Economist podcast visuals. The illustration style and secondary colour palette were created to make a visual system for the existing and future newsletters. I designed five new idents and lightly refreshed four existing ones previously created by the editorial design team.
Art direction: Stephen Petch
Newsletter and web page design: Mark Mitchell and Beatrice Tamagnini
Design system & ident illustration (with exceptions listed below): Laura Dirzyte
The Extraordinary Story: Noma Bar
Money Talks, Checks & Balance ident: Matt Withers
The Economist Newsletter Identities and Design System • 2021
This identity system gave a way to create consistent and instantly recognisable look for the newsletters, their promotional modules on the website as well as digital and print ads. Since the rollout several new newsletters launched with idents created by external illustrators who successfully worked with the design system.