In good company: How publishers use Figma to help design the news

At trusted titles like 纽约时报 , The Economist , and The Minnesota Star Tribune , great design can support great journalism. Here’s how media teams use Figma to collaborate on news design and explore new formats.

Between pivots to web and mobile, and forays into new formats, news media has completely reinvented itself in the past two decades. As publishers figure out how to thrive in the digital era, the pace of change is only accelerating. In an unpredictable ad market, subscription-based strategies are on the rise. However, while readers are accustomed to paying for print media, online news has been a tougher sell. At legacy publications, this poses a challenge: how to build relationships with new readers in this rapidly evolving digital and information ecosystem.

To meet the moment, these media companies are using Figma. Whether redesigning an app, introducing a typeface, or launching a website, teams need to stay in lockstep to uphold accuracy, clarity, and accessibility as they experiment with new ways to dispatch the news. We sat down with leaders in media to find out how they’re navigating change.

How The New York Times launched a redesigned app

Since launching its website in the 1990s, The New York Times has been steadily remaking itself as a digital-first brand. Its current business model focuses on converting subscribers to one of its digital products—News, Games, Cooking, Audio, Wirecutter, and The Athletic—into subscribers for all of them. With over 11.4 million total subscribers, nearly half of whom pay for more than one product, it’s safe to say that the approach is working.

When The Times redesigned its app, which relaunched in October 2024, it kept this product ecosystem at the heart of its strategy. In the previous version, readers had to tap and scroll through multiple subsections to find the articles and features they wanted. Now, users land on the Today section, which surfaces the latest news, while a top navigation helps them discover other verticals and products. Each has its own home screen, making it easier to discover all The Times offers beyond the day’s top headlines. “The idea is that all the other pieces rotate around the sun, and the sun is journalism,” says Jak Horner, Principal Product Designer at The Times.

Rather than a “super app” that slots all Times offerings into a central news feed, the app encourages users to scroll to other feeds, each of which has its own visual identity. The Lifestyle section, for example, presents a grid of images with headline overlays—an adaptation of a visually driven component that The Times calls a “poster”—while the Opinion section has stylized headlines that convey a different perspective.

Read more about The New York Times' redesign in the full article.

How The Economist rolled out a digital-friendly typeface

Early last year, The Economist launched two new typefaces, Economist Serif and Economist Sans, and an updated logo. While the publication underwent a more comprehensive redesign in 2018, “it was still in the context of a more print-focused audience,” says Adam Morris, Head of Product Design at The Economist. Since then, the publication’s readership has steadily become more digital. More than 65% of subscriptions are digital-only, up from 35% four years ago, and 85% of new subscribers are digital. With the multi-platform focus, The Economist needed type that could live comfortably everywhere—while also nodding to its brand heritage.

“There are loads of different contexts that weren’t a priority in 2018,” says Adam, noting that the company has been growing its newsletter and app readership as well as its audience on TikTok, LinkedIn, and Instagram. “Your typography has to work much harder now. But the core thing is that people pay to read our journalism, and you’ve got to have a typeface that makes it a pleasure to read.”

Typographer Henrik Kubel of the foundry A2-TYPE worked with Stephen Petch, Creative Director at The Economist, and Adam and his team to create the new variable typefaces. Drawing inspiration from the newspaper’s rich, 180-year history, the serif references Plantin; the sans serif, Venus. Adam and his team relied on Figma to make sure each letterform would work across diverse use cases, from charts and body text to bold headlines. Sometimes individual characters felt too ornate in situ, or clashed with page layouts. To wit: The team went back and forth on the length of the tail on the capital letter “Q” before ultimately deciding on three versions, ranging from a short one for drop caps to a longer one for special applications, like a headline or corporate holiday card.

“With the new typographic system and with Figma, we’re able to have a streamlined experience everywhere,” says Mark Mitchell, Principal Product Designer at The Economist. “The typescale and grid is flexible enough to scale up across the website, app, and newsletters.” The team centralizes their brand typefaces in a foundations library in Figma, making it easy to roll changes out across surfaces. “It’s just a better experience, and we have better control.”

Read more about The Economist's typeface in the full article.

How The Minnesota Star Tribune transformed its brand to reach new readers

The Minnesota Star Tribune, whose circulation ranks among the top 10 daily publications in the U.S., has made it its mission to become a leading model for local news. While the paper boasts a loyal readership, its digital presence needed an overhaul to attract a younger audience—and sustain the business for years to come. As it was, the reader experience between desktop and mobile sites was inconsistent. Both sites were information dense and text-heavy, and even had different code bases. “Where we had been was pretty fragmented,” says Josh Penrod, Head of Design at the Star Tribune. “We did not have a single responsive site, which eroded brand trust.”

Working with the award-winning digital agency Code and Theory , the Star Tribune built a new responsive website, which launched in August last year along with a comprehensive rebranding, which included a new logo and typography. Now when mobile and desktop readers visit the Star Tribune online, they’ll have a similar experience. “We went into the project with the idea of removing friction and having a device-agnostic approach to content, stories, and narratives,” says Francisco Seiz, Senior Design Director at Code and Theory. “It’s crucial to have an experience that’s completely seamless and frictionless because as soon as it isn’t, it’s alienating to readers.”

Read more about The Minnesota Star Tribune's brand transformation in the full article.

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As the news industry looks for ways to keep readers engaged, build new audiences, and strengthen its business, the need to work collaboratively and effectively will only become more essential—especially given the rapidly changing digital landscape. For those in the business of news, Figma has been instrumental for navigating change. To learn how it can benefit your team, get in touch for a demo.