Interview with Jacek Utko, Bonnier Business Press

Jacek Utko is the design director for the Bonnier Business Press. Based in Poland, he is responsible for the design of all the newspapers in the group. Äripäev is the second newspaper that he has redesigned that was later named “World’s Best Designed” by the Society for News Design. The first was Puls Biznesu (also part of the Bonnier Business Press) in 2004.

newspaper techniques: What was the process like for redesigning Äripäev – when was the decision made to do it, and what steps came next? How long did it take from the beginning of planning to the relaunch with the new design?

Jacek Utko: Usually, it takes around half a year to redesign a paper. The relaunch was in the autumn of last year (November 2006). We had started the process at the beginning of the year, and usually the process that we do has several steps.

First, we start with the strategy questions: ‘What is the goal? / What do we want to achieve?’ It’s good to have a very concrete strategic goal in figures. For instance, they wanted to sell 25,000 copies by subscription.

Then we discussed the strategy, ‘How are we going to achieve it?’ And it was a discussion mainly between the president of the company and the editor in chief and with the president of the whole publishing house, Bonnier Business Press. So, there were three people talking about what to do about it.

One of the ideas that can raise the sales is the weekend section. It can be special, with a different name for Friday-Saturday-Sunday with special articles and a different structure than the everyday newspaper: more features, more stories, more investigative journalism, some interviews, etc. This idea is not completely original: It’s based a bit on the success of the Norwegian newspaper, Dagens Naerinsliv, which is the biggest business paper in Norway. They have also tried this idea for their weekend edition. They were very successful with it, and they sell a lot of copies on the weekend. So, it’s similar in concept with Äripäev with different market conditions.

After the strategy and the goal, we discussed what changes there should be in the content. We redesigned the structure of the newspaper: section by section, page by page. There are several new sections. The beginning of the newspaper is different. Pages two and three have a new section called ‘Five minutes,’ so every day we have short news mixed with magazine elements like brief interviews, quotes. Very short stuff, very fast to read and also the breaking news. In the weekend edition, they call it ‘Five days,’ and this is a review of the whole week: what was important, and also a bit about what’s going to be on the agenda next week.

After this point, when we have a very precise new structure, with a page by page described, we started to design it.

It usually takes a few weeks for the strategy and then around one month for the content discussions, and then you start designing. So, actually almost two months are spent on discussions not about design, but for the other things, and I’m usually very active in this part. I’m not just waiting for: ‘What are they going to say?’ ‘What are they going to tell me?’

I’m a part of the process from the very beginning because I don’t believe in a redesign that looks good, but it doesn’t help sales, because that’s a bad experience for all of us.

nt: How different is it to redesign a business newspaper as opposed to a traditional daily newspaper? Are there some key differences in the design process?

J. Utko: Business newspapers are harder to redesign because the material you work on, the data, are very serious and not easy to illustrate.

It is not hard to make a sport newspaper look good, or some features section look good, but it’s really hard to illustrate business news. And, the biggest problem actually, with this concept of a newspaper, is that our news is exclusive. We have our sources of information, and it’s very unique. So, that’s a problem for design, because when it is unique, you cannot have a news picture because what kind of news picture are you going to have when you have confidential information or something that is exclusive? So, the palette of tools we can use is really very limited, and we have to try harder than the normal daily newspaper to illustrate it nicely.

A lot of times, we illustrate the news with archive photos. So, that’s a disadvantage.

Another thing is that you have to be really familiar with the topics, you have to know a little bit about the stock market, about the business, you have to know a lot about the info graphics because with these papers the main illustration is graphics for the articles.

nt: What were the most challenging aspects of the process?

J. Utko: I didn’t see much challenge in working with the people, or that it was a very bad design that had to be improved. These guys are very professional both in the design part and in the editorial part. The quality of the editorial content was very high and actually, the culture of work is really impressive. I had no problem with them. The biggest challenge was to push this paper, which was already very good, to a higher level.

nt: You have now redesigned two newspapers that have gone on to be named ‘World’s Best Designed’ by the Society for News Design, what does this mean to you?

J. Utko:I think my biggest satisfaction behind this award is that small papers with very limited staff and budgets (I mean both Puls Biznesu and Äripäev) can win against big, established brands that spend millions on redesigns.

Page first published: 21.08.2007