April 2019 – Now
UI Design Lead
In-house design team
Over the past couple of years, I have worked on a complete redesign of the Handelsblatt brand. Since 2019, our design team has strategized, designed and developed every single touchpoint of Handelsblatt – completely in-house.
The result of the project is one large ecosystem, consisting of the news website, an app, several digital platforms, social media presence, newsletters and the printed newspaper – all in one seamless experience.
New editorial formats and storytelling elements and across multimedia have played a key roll in the redesign.
As the basis for the Handelsblatt relaunch, the new Handelsblatt design system was created. The brand has received a complete overhaul for the digital age.
The design system follows the atomic design principle and contains all the assets and rules for the digital products and branding of Handelsblatt. It was created with all digital touch points in mind and grew in close collaboration with the new printed issue of Handelsblatt.
The system includes brand new principles, typography, colors, interactive elements, editorial formats, a custom icon set, illustrations and everything else needed to build websites, apps, newsletters, social media posts and other digital products.
The Handelsblatt Design System is the basis for all digital touchpoints.
The Handelsblatt Relaunch spans a wide variety of products. The core products like the news-website and the app have been completely redesigned and rebuilt. Other products have been newly created in order to compliment the existing product family.
A seamless user experience across these touch points, no matter on which device, as well as new and improved possibilities for editors to tell their stories were among the main goals.
As the basis for the relaunch, we have done extensive user research at every stage of the design process. Initial ideation was founded on an extensive amount of feedback, collect from the last generation of products. In later stages of the process, the design was constantly verified and refined.
A seamless user experience across the two hero products, app and web was essential.
At the core of the new Handelsblatt ecosystem, the news-website can be found. Being able to access news from anywhere and at every time, the new website has been designed with a priority on mobile first and responsively optimized for four different viewports – mobile, tablet, small desktop and large desktop. It has been completely developed in-house.
As the brands hero-product, the website was used to lay the foundation for a variety of new editorial formats like long reads, opinion pieces, new podcast and video integrations, a stock platform and the „Meine News“ service, which lets users customize their experience.
These features were then rolled out onto other relevant touchpoints for a seamless experience.
The new digital products are fully responsive and optimised for four different breakpoints.
The Handelsblatt Ecosystem spans a wide variety of touch points, which are all interconnected.
At the center, the news-website and the app can be found. Other products and services, which have been realized as part of the new Handelsblatt and utilizing the design system are:
Live – platform for digital events
Mediathek – home of audiovisual content
Management Campus – eLearning hub
ePaper – virtual copy of the newspaper
Börse – stock portfolio tool
Business Board – research tool
Newsletters
Podcasts
Social media
The different platforms form one coherent ecosystem.