BERLIN: Arab News, the Middle East’s leading English-language daily, has been honoured with a prestigious design award following the newspaper’s revamp unveiled in April.
The newspaper picked up a silver award in the “redesigned product category” at the WAN-IFRA Print Innovation Awards, held in Berlin on Oct. 9.
The award clinched by Arab News follows its revamp in April 2018, which saw a bold, modern new design across the printed newspaper and website, under the tagline “The Voice of a Changing Region.”
The redesign — part of the newspaper’s “more digital, more global” strategy — reflected a new approach to stories that is better suited to the Internet age. Articles are now supplemented with contextual analysis and elegant graphics and background facts giving richness to the newspaper’s output.
“As part of our strategy to make Arab News a globally recognized brand, we made sure our recent relaunch adheres to the highest industry standards in design. As such, we opted to enter this prestigious WAN-IFRA international competition as opposed to a regional one; and so, to come out with the silver award is something we are very proud of,” said Faisal J. Abbas, Editor-in-Chief of Arab News.
“This recognition is dedicated to the Arab News team who has worked extremely hard to guarantee a smooth relaunch, while at the same time ensuring our daily operations didn’t get affected. I’d also like to thank our SRMG board of directors and our relaunch partners Innovation. However, the biggest thanks goes to our readers for their continued vote of confidence and the increase in readership we have witnessed since the redesign,” Abbas added.
Manfred Werfel, deputy chief executive of WAN-IFRA, noted the newspaper’s “innovative” redesign.
“In April 2018 Arab News underwent an extensive and ambitious redesign using innovative elements. As ‘The Voice of a Changing Region,’ Arab News developed a new identity and now offers a modern, stylish design,” he said.
Arab News's Global Creative Director, Simon Khalil said: "To be recognised on a global level with this award is a great honour. There were over 150 entries in the redesign category from all over the world so for Arab News to win silver is a brilliant achievement. We are the voice of a changing region and our design changed, and evolved, to mirror the changes in the Kingdom. This award will inspire the whole team to produce even better design and content for our readers and we are very pleased the industry has recognised our efforts with this prestigious award."
The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, or WAN-IFRA, is the global organization of the world’s press, and was founded in 1948.
It organizes several award events, including the World Digital Media Awards and the inaugural Print Innovation Awards held today. The latter event — which attracted 54 registrations from 19 countries — was judged by members of the World Printers Forum Board members.
The other contenders in the “redesigned product category” were the Columbian titles Rediseño de el Tiempo and Rediseño Portafolio.
