Sarah Sampsel

Approaching the visual design of the iPad application was pretty easy at first. The Post has a very recognizable newspaper that recently went through a redesign and a web site going through tremendous visual and technical transformation. What elements across these products can we borrow? What do the very loyal users and readers want to see?

We started by licensing Post fonts from The Font Bureau to use on the iPad — Headlines use variations of Postoni, blurbs and article content use Georgia Pro, and all section labeling and buttons use Franklin ITC Std. We carried over other visual elements from print, such as columnist head shot styles, headline font weights and line styles.

All these elements played a huge part in making the iPad app design tie into The Post brand. Borrowing visuals from print made this new device, with an interface so different than anything else, suddenly start to feel comfortable — the unfamiliar became familiar.

However, assimilating visual details from the newspaper wasn’t enough to create a device-specific design. It’s great to push the idea of a brand-centric app, but you can’t just remake the print product to fit the dimensions of an iPad and call it a day. Where’s the line between brand familiarity and creating a custom design for tablet devices?

We explored this idea by designing textures and definition that would avoid us ending up with a flat, familiar visual identity. We applied simple patterned, diagonal line textures throughout backgrounds and anchored the topics bar with similar detail to create depth. It doesn’t take much to make flat, colorless surfaces become dimensional.

Here are a few ways this visual identity evolved:

Next up.. modules and more visual design!