Julian Bovis

Daily Telegraph, 7th July 2005

Julian Bovis, born 2nd of April 1969 is a British journalist and Newspaper Art Director. He was born in Banbury, United Kingdom and although studying Architecture at University of Plymouth, rose to prominence in the newspaper industry in the 1990s when he re-designed a number of English daily newspapers, changing them from broadsheet to tabloid format.

History

Although more notable for art directing national newspapers, Julian started off working on weekly Pop music magazines. He started work on the Melody Maker and in 1990-1992 the BBC's now defunct pop magazine, No.1. Whilst working in Australia in 1993 Julian was part of the Inside Soap magazine launch team before moving back to the United Kingdom to design the British version.

By 1993 he was in charge of the Daily Star typography re-design and changed the character of the newspaper by introducing Impact (typeface) - which is still in use. Impact is one of the world's most notoriously tabloid typefaces and is more commonly used on celebrity magazines than newspapers.

After his move from the Daily Star, Julian was responsible for the controversial change of format of some of England's most popular evening newspapers. In 1994 as Art Director of United Provincial Newspapers he re-designed six City newspapers, changing them from their traditional upmarket broadsheet format to a more economical and populist tabloid format. These included the Lancashire Evening Post and the Blackpool Gazette. There was much criticism at the time that the newspapers were being driven downmarket, although the Yorkshire Post refrained from change and remains a daily broadsheet newspaper. England had traditionally read Broadsheet evening newspapers, and the cultural change was swift - culminating just thirteen years later in April 2007 when the country's final evening newspaper, The Halifax Evening Courier, lost it's battle and became a tabloid.

By 1995 Julian was art directing the Edinburgh Evening News where he won Scottish Newspaper Design of The Year for his work on the live news section, most notably the coverage of the Dunblane massacre

After winning two more design awards in 1998 and 2000, Julian joined the judging panel for the 2001 National Newspaper Awards.

In 1999 he worked with broadcaster Jeff Randall (journalist) as part of the launch team of Sunday Business newspaper - Britain's first national Sunday in over twenty-five years. He art directed the newspaper for four years until it was converted to a magazine under the Editorship of Andrew Neil. By the summer of 2003 most of the newspaper's original launch team had been head-hunted by rival national newspapers and the production of Sunday Business was handed over to the Press Association in London's Victoria.

He returned to daily newspapers in 2003 when he joined The Daily Telegraph as Executive Design Editor - where he was responsible for some of the newspaper's most notorious front pages; including the award-winning Boxing Day edition of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and the 2005 front page celebrating London's winning bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Julian's work on the 7 July 2005 London bombings won the Daily Telegraph the European Newspaper Design Award for news coverage. He reflects on the day's events and discusses how newspapers handle breaking news in 'Disaster Days' on the ZealiFeel blog.

In the summer of 2006 he oversaw the re-design of The Daily Telegraph's website, introducing the newspaper's famous Gothic alphabet masthead, increasing the use of online photographs and using design principles to visually link the website to the printed newspaper. The re-design saw the monthly pages views rise from 41.6m to 52.8m.

Julian left The Daily Telegraph in February 2008 and became a consultant for Sport Media Group where he is overseeing the re-design and re-launch of The Daily Sport, one of Britain's 4 red-top national daily tabloid newspapers.

Awards

1996 Scottish Newspaper Design of The Year Edinburgh Evening News

1998 Newspaper Design of The Year for Sunday Business Newspaper Sunday Business

2000 Newspaper Design of The Year for Sunday Business Newspaper Sunday Business

2004 Newspaper Design of The Year The Daily Telegraph

2005 European Newspaper Design Award: The 7/7 London Bombings The Daily Telegraph

Blogging

Julian is currently editing The Zeal I Feel - a blog dedicated to Newspaper and Magazine Design and it's translation onto the world wide web.

External links