Henrik Balzer - Handelsblatt Media Group

April 2019 – Now

Design Lead (Digital Products)

In-house design team

Handelsblatt Media Group is the major provider of business and financial journalism in Germany. The publishing house has two main publications – both with rich heritage. Handelsblatt – the daily newspaper since 1946 – and WirtschaftsWoche – the weekly magazine since 1926.

Over the past couple of years, I have worked on a complete redesign of the Handelsblatt and WirtschaftsWoche brand and product ecosystem. Since 2019, our design team has strategized, designed and developed every single touchpoint – completely in-house.

The result of the project is one large multi-brand ecosystem, consisting of the news websites, apps, several digital platforms, social media presence, newsletters and the printed newspaper and magazine – all in one seamless experience.

New editorial formats and storytelling elements have been created for Handelsblatt…

… and also for WirtschaftsWoche.

As the basis for the Handelsblatt and WirtschaftsWoche relaunch, a new multi-brand design system was created. The brands have 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 the two brands. It was created with all digital touch points in mind and grew in close collaboration with the new printed issues.

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. It is able to switch between the two brands as needed, allowing for maximum flexibility.

Excerpt of the design system in Handelsblatt styling – The Design System is the basis of all digital touchpoints and can be switched between the two brands.

The Relaunch spans a wide variety of products. The core products like the news-websites and the apps 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 Product Ecosystem of both brands spans a wide variety of touchpoints, which are all interconnected.

The news-websites and the apps can be found at the center of the product portfolio. New products and services have also been designed outside of the relaunch: