Seattle and Raleigh-Durham marketing, graphic and brand design studio Design Kompany

Summary: The Northwest Asian Weekly tapped DK to update its brand to tie in with the eve of its 25-year anniversary. Modern and contemporary were some of the keywords. The paper was so excited about the new design, they ran a red emblem that said “new look!” on the top of the front page for several months.

Here is the original post announcing the new identity:

Coming from newspapers, I absolutely love art for media publications. Deadline-driven, especially. It’s so fun to make storytelling the main focal point, and use strong visuals and the right collection of words to do it. So when we got the commission to rebrand a Seattle community newspaper—the Northwest Asian Weekly—of course I was 300% psyched.

DK’s Dipika Kohli filled in as a guest designer for the first issue of the year, a 16-pager.

We’ve been working through this like any other branding project. Ask questions. Build a brand statement. Come up with sketches that speak to that vibe. Here, this is more or less along the lines of “NW Asian Weekly: An optimistic window to the world.” Hence the little “window” above the “i.” Like it?

More on this project as the page design unfolds.

Update: September 2007

Design Kompany got a nice writeup in the Northwest Asian Weekly about how we arrived at this exact design for the newspage design and brand identity. Reporter Michelle Kang interviewed Dipika Kohli, here’s part of the story:

Kohli explained that the logo’s gold square comes from a conversation she had with the paper’s chief staff, including publisher and founder Assunta Ng, editor Carol Vu and associate editor Ann-Marie Stillion. “We talked about how the paper should be a window on global issues, and I loved that idea. The box represents that window,” Kohli explained.

The result is what you hold in your hands now: a logo and layout that is clean and sophisticated, but still communicates the energy and accessibility of a local community paper. –Michelle Kang, full story in the Northwest Asian Weekly

Update: November 2007

This is how the paper is looking with the new design! I just picked it up at one of those boxes outside the Post Office on 3rd and Union. It’s so nice to see it in real life, changing from week to week but still in sync with our “window to the world” brand identity concept. Clearly all the talking we do as part of brand design helps people solidify their outward image. Yay!

Update: March 2008
It’s so fun to see the new page design whenever I happen to be downtown anywhere near Pioneer Square or the International District.

Found this and thought it would give you a picture of the community newspaper in context.

Check out the front page–running a large picture in the center column and stories down the sides was one of the front page template options we provided as part of the total newspaper redesign.

Update: September 2008

The Northwest Asian Weekly just changed its editorial and design staff. I’ve been looking at the recent issues and seeing how the new editor and layout designer are trying things out. It’s cool to see people experimenting with a fixed framework to try out new visual layouts. I hope they enjoy using the style guide and page templates Design Kompany created as part of our project.

DK Portfolio

Update: October 2008

I just picked up another issue of the Northwest Asian Weekly.

Interestingly, the new staff is getting to try out their own kinds of design styles on the layout for the paper. That means some of the typefaces and column-widths and other formatting-related specs we’d recommended might change. I like the way there’s a person on the front right-hand corner. Prime real estate, that. A lot can change, but then, everything is an evolution.

The good news for DK is, they’re keeping the flag we designed.

And using the same logo we created, too. Phew!