While the Italian daily La Repubblica turned to the designers of The Guardian for its typeface, by contrast the Guardian Media Group opted for the Italian type designers at CAST to revamp The Observer. Since its foundation, more than two centuries after it first came out on 4 December 1791, The Observer has been committed to informing its readers ‘unbiased by prejudice – uninfluenced by party’.

Here’s what creative director Alex Bauer had to say:

When approaching the design for the new tabloid version of the Observer it felt important to restate all the things the readers love about Observer journalism. It is a great Sunday paper full of great investigative journalism, cultural insight, with a rich range of characterful voices and wit.

It was important for us to evolve the typography to embody all of these attributes. We needed a display typeface with a range of weights that was rich in character and able to convey the weight of gravitas and tradition but also the vitality of the contemporary.

When we discovered Sole Serif from CAST we knew very quickly that this font reflected our ambition — from the heavy, characterful black and bold weights to the graceful and elegant lighter weights — we knew we had in our hands a wonderful, rich and expressive typographic palette with which to develop the design.

View Sole Serif | View Sole Serif in use