TODAY‘s iPhone app icon caught my attention today while I was travelling on the bus. It looks a whole lot sexier than the flat chilli red that it used to be. The red almost seems to be hiding something it’s not telling you, tempting you to open the app for more details. I am obviously very late to the party of writing about its rebranding, but late is better than never!
TODAY is the freely distributed daily newspaper owned by MediaCorp, and is Singapore’s second most-read paper. TODAY was first set up to compete with the defunct Streats, a free newspaper distributed by Singapore Press Holdings. The paper obviously has huge staying power, having been around for about 12 years.
TODAY tends to have more opinion pieces as compared to the dominant paper, The Straits Times. As a reader of both papers, I have felt that TODAY tends to offer commentaries that are closer to the heart of citizens, and give alternative views to that of the dominant broadsheet.
The logo was rebranded in May 2012 into a bolder look that we see today:
Logo
The previous font was changed into something very similar but more edgy. If you stare intensely at the “D”, you would see that the new logo has cleaner lines. At the same time, the red gradient background adds some sensation to the logo, making it a whole lot bolder than the old logo with a plain white background. Looks the same, but oh so very different.
Website
It also has an online newspaper which in my opinion, is the best-designed amongst all the other newspaper portals in Singapore. The page is clean with wide open white space for the headlines to take precedence. It helps that the font used is something out of the ordinary too, giving it a fresh, young look.
As is expected of a free newspaper, the advertising space is big and bold, yet very integrated such that it does not disturb your reading pleasure. It clearly understands that the traditional mode of advertising is not sustainable, and represents a stronger push on the part of MediaCorp into online advertising. The advertising as it appears here is much better than its sister portal, ChannelNewsAsia, a news channel also run by MediaCorp.
Navigation is a real joy too. I love just running the cursor around the tabs to see them move about. Altogether a very well-built site.
What do you think about TODAY? Write your thoughts in the comments below!
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