About this homepage
On this website, I conduct conversations with designers working in journalistic contexts – product designers, editorial designers, art directors, and photo editors. I do so as a designer myself, and out of a shared concern: not only is the publishing industry under increasing economic and technological pressure, but the role of design within journalism is being fundamentally misunderstood.
In an era in which content is increasingly consumed visually, design in journalism is not a secondary craft. It is a constitutive force. My central thesis is therefore this: if information is a foundational resource of democracy, then editorial design is part of the democratic infrastructure that makes this resource accessible.
To explain why this matters, some contextualization is necessary.
Editorial Design and Visual Journalism as Democratic Infrastructure
It is 2026, and we are living through one of the most volatile political moments of recent decades. Political alliances dissolve, coalitions reassemble, and societal shifts that once unfolded over generations now occur within years – or even months. Democracies are transforming, and in many places coming under strain.
Public discourse tends to focus on content: narratives, misinformation, populism. Far less attention is paid to the form through which the public sphere is produced today. Yet this form – its structures of visibility, legibility, and orientation – is decisive.
Ours is a profoundly visual present. Political reality is no longer primarily read; it is scanned, swiped, and often skipped. Designers translate journalistic content into visual orders. In doing so, they do not merely design interfaces – they design access. They structure how information appears, how it is prioritized, and how it becomes intelligible within the public sphere.
If information is essential to democratic participation, then editorial design functions as the infrastructure that enables – or obstructs – this participation.
And this is precisely where the problem lies. This infrastructure is increasingly damaged. It works well for some – and systematically excludes others.
Three structural dynamics are particularly decisive.
First, news organizations depend on traffic; traffic depends on platforms; and platforms shape content. Design follows distribution, and distribution today is governed by algorithms. What becomes visible is not necessarily what is socially relevant, but what is algorithmically rewarded. Editorial design thus turns reactive: optimized for attention rather than orientation, for clicks rather than comprehension. Visibility replaces significance.
Second, we increasingly design for subscribers rather than for citizens. Business models exert a dominant influence on design decisions. Conversion, retention, and paywall optimization become guiding principles, while accessibility, clarity, and inclusion recede into the background. Those who are not already informed, linguistically confident, or habituated to journalistic formats are quietly excluded. The public sphere contracts and becomes selective.
Third, trust in journalism is eroding. This erosion is often framed as a crisis of content, but it is equally a crisis of relationship. A widening gap has emerged between editorial priorities and the lived realities of users. In interviews, this gap is articulated with striking consistency: “News websites feel like work.” — “I don’t feel smart enough to understand them.” — “The design doesn’t show me what matters – only what I am expected to subscribe to.”
These are not merely usability concerns. They are questions of access to the public sphere.
My diagnosis is therefore intentionally sober: we are building the wrong products. Often without explicit intent, they serve a narrow, already privileged audience – while gradually losing everyone else. This is not the result of bad faith, but of systemic blindness within the structures that govern contemporary journalism.
What follows from this for our role as designers is, above all, responsibility. Editorial design can no longer be understood as a purely aesthetic discipline that “polishes” decisions made elsewhere in the production chain. It is a structural — and inherently political — practice. It concerns systems rather than surfaces, participation rather than decoration, and the public mandate of journalism rather than its mere appearance.
This website is an attempt to create a space for reflection and exchange around these questions. Through conversations with designers, it seeks to make visible the often – overlooked role of editorial design as democratic infrastructure – and to explore how this infrastructure might be repaired, reimagined, and reclaimed.
Thomas Weyres