Now that the new look TES has been officially launched we thought we should reflect on the new design. According to TSL Education the old TES was tired and needed to shed its image, akin to a dowdy, middle-aged, overweight, spinster school teacher. Ipso facto, what it needed was a design that reflected the young, exciting, slim, female/metrosexual professional educationalist.

To achieve this, TSL put the redesign in the hands of David Hillman, one of the partners at the internationally famous design agency Pentagram. Originally a designer for The Sunday Times, Hillman has done just about everything in design and is a Fellow of the Chartered Society of Designers, a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale, was appointed a Royal Designer for Industry in 1997and in 2004 was made a Senior Fellow at the Royal College of Art.

TSL got what they paid for and the new design is refreshing and rather good. Whether the content can match this promise after all the cuts imposed by the new owners, is another matter entirely. With classified advertising rates ramped up by 16%, one unhappy former advertiser commented that even with the changes, ‘A pig in a dress is still a pig’! Exponent Private Equity, TSL Education’s owners, will be hoping that the new design isn’t a pig in a poke.

www.pentagram.com

www.tes.co.uk

www.tsleducation.com