Handelsblatt is one of the most important financial dailies in Germany. I am honored to have worked with the team of Handelsblatt, a part of the Von Holtzbrinck Medien Group when the paper switched from a broadsheet format to tabloid. I had also worked with them earlier with design elements of the broadsheet. The Von Holtzbrinck group is one with which I have worked extensively in Germany, in about 17 projects.

That is why it is good to read that now Handelsblatt embarks in a major push for its ambitious global effort.

It is Handelsblatt Global.

It makes sense. The world is interested in doing business with Germany and vice versa. Germany is the largest economy in the European Union, the fourth-largest by nominal GDP in the world, and fifth by GDP (PPP).

In 2017, the country accounted for 28% of the euro area economy

Handelsblatt covers this economy well, with insightful news stories and commentaries by top experts..

Andreas Kluth is leading Handelsblatt’s English-language efforts. Kluth is bringing a philosophy that differs from that of others who have tried to take German products to an English-language market: translations.

“I feel like a pastor giving speeches sometimes, but I’ve banned the word ‘translation.’ Translation never works: We adapt, remix, splice, turn upside-down, and we do our own stories even without recourse to our German colleagues. And when we lay out the English version of German stories on our site, they’re new articles loosely based on the German articles,” Kluth said. “There’s a completely different tradition for the structure of a story — lede, nutgraf — in France, in Russia, in China, in Germany, in the U.S.”

I also like how Kluth sees his project:

“Culturally, linguistically, you can think of this as an Anglo-Saxon startup inside this very large German group. “

Will be looking forward to see how this project develops and what type of acceptance the global Handelsblatt finds among English language readers.

Society of News Design New York: Celebrating 40 years

The Society for News Design’s 40th Anniversary Workshop, Creative Conference and Awards Gala will be in New York City, March 22–24.

Workshop chair Tyson Evans, of The New York Times, and an army of volunteers are organizing three packed days of talks, training, networking and inspiration about the future (and past) of storytelling, visual journalism and news products across print and digital.

Speakers announced so far include Scott Stowell, proprietor of Open and winner of the National Design Award for Communication Design; Jennifer Daniel, of Google; John Maeda, of Automattic and visual journalists from The New York Times, Washington Post, Axios, Vice, ProPublica and more.

I am honored to be one of the speakers.

If you would like to attend what promises to be one of the best SND gatherings ever, please go here for more information:

https://nyc.snd.org