The new brand design Design Kompany made for the Seattle community newspaper Northwest Asian Weekly is set to hit the streets September 27.
Just the other day, Design Kompany wandered about in the International District, where we noticed the Northwest Asian Weekly’s sign was missing from the front of their office… Could it be to make way for the updated Northwest Asian Weekly logo design we made?!
Mulling this over, we didn’t miss the opportunity to stock up on sketchbooks and stickers at Kinokuniya, get a Super Lucky cat from Uwajimaya, and break for bubble tea at this place I manage to keep being at called Oasis Tea Zone.
OK, I am not personally a bubble tea fan but this really was like being in high school, which every now and then is… all right.
More importantly, getting to redesign the NW Asian Weekly is all very exciting for us, as we’re big into community and also media design. I did layout for Seattle Central’s student newspaper The City Collegian, as well as newspage design for what’s now called the West Cork People in Clonakilty, Ireland.
Yes, Ireland! Ask me about this if our paths ever cross in the miniopolis of Seattle.
Like every branding project, rebranding the Northwest Asian Weekly meant taking a close look at how the company wants to be perceived. Here’s the gist of how it went.
Design Kompany’s role in redesigning the Northwest Asian Weekly
After 25 years, it was a good time to come up with a new face for the paper, according to NW Asian Weekly and Seattle Chinese Post publisher Assunta Ng. I got to work with Assunta and her staff over Christmas holidays 2006 on simple layout, so I got a feel for the workings of the paper and could kind of guess what it was about.
All this inside knowledge really helped in informing the brand identity design: we weren’t cold consultants coming in from some expensive agency. We’re a small business helping out another small business. And we’re still here, to help the NW Asian Weekly when the tiny hiccups come up with the transition over to the new pages and new look.
Some of the things we did: design the new flag (top, front nameplate), select a new set of font families to use (News Gothic and Adobe Calson Pro), select a color palette to stick to for blocks of headers, create page templates in Adobe InDesign, and suggest how the logotype and “window” concept element could look in reverse, or shrunk down to less than a square inch.
All of these things are important to consider as part of the package of brand design deliverables. Getting all the tiny details right is what’s key. Excited to see the new paper come out next week! –DK
DK redesigns the NW Asian Weekly
‘Vibe’ spectrum
Layout for the NW Asian Weekly in 2006
Nice work guys! It looks great. B