Malayala Manorama revamped after 7 years!

The dawn of 2012 has seen a renewed interest in the Kerala market. Off-late like the cola wars lot has been written about the interest in the market by two big publication houses . Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd's (BCCL), in collaboration with Kerala's No. 2 Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi, launched its flagship English daily, The Times of India in Kerala and The Hindu group also strengthened itself that market.

This step has made some regional players like Malayala Manorama to introspect and bring in a smart and better content for their readers. The Malayala Manorama daily has been redesigned. It seems after BCCL stepped in Kerala the Manorama team has toughened.

After a gap of seven years, it has been re-designed once again. In 2005, the daily went through the process of revamp. In an exclusive chat with Adgully, Jose Panachipuram, Chief News Editor, Malayala Manorama shared some insights about the revamp.

On asking the reason behind the re-design, Jose said, "We have a practice of redesigning the paper at specific intervals to be in tune with the changing times. The last redesign was in 2005. It was done by the great master Mario Garcia, the Cuba born US designer. Before that we had a redesign by Peter Ong from singapore. It was sort of an oriental school of design whereas in the case of Mario it was thoroughly western."

The new look of the newspaper went live on 5th February 2012. This time the redesign was done by Javier Errea, who is primarily a journalist but likes to be called a news designer and his team from Spain. Javier heads the design organization, ERREA COMUNICACION. In redesigning Malayala Manorama he was helped by Laura Maria Cruz, a specialist in info graphics and Ana Perez who specializes in design. Javier's design is very much flexible and journalist-friendly. He has contributed a fresh restructuring and navigation to Malayala Manorama this time with introducing a new colour palette.