Original Tehelka cover page
PRINT MEDIA / CLASSROOM PROJECT
Tehelka is a delightful Urdu word, difficult to translate. It refers to that special kind of tumult provoked by a daring act, or a sensational piece of writing.
Tehelka is also an Indian weekly magazine, founded by Tarun Tejpal. Started as a news portal, tehelka.com in 2000, it transitioned through a printed newspaper format until it became a magazine in 2007.
The editorial was redesigned as a part of a classroom project. The brief was to critically analyse an existing magazine and then redesign it.
Created with the motto, “Free-Fair-Fearless”, Tehelka mixes hard-core investigative journalism with strong perspective pieces on politics and major debates in modern India.
CONTROVERSY AND DESIGN SCOPE
In November 2013, Tehelka found itself in the midst of a controversy when Tarun Tejpal, the founder was accused of sexual assaulting his woman journalist colleague. As a result, Tarun Tejpal resigned and several other employees, including the managing editor also quit.
Tehelka, on the other hand, survived this controversy. Since, this classroom project was done during January 2014, a complete revamp of Tehelka was suggested as it emerged from the ashes of it's horrible controversy. The new look would be bolder and cleaner and would symbolize Tehelka moving forward.
The new proposed look for Tehelka. The new layout will be white dominant so that important information will stand out. White has good contrast with black and red, which help the magazine position itself as bold and straightforward, both of which are intergral to Tehelka's ideology.
These are the regular content pages of Tehelka. Apart from typographical redesigns, the main feature that was added in the magazine were the news snippets in each stories. These snippets, highlighted in red, will stand out from the content and will help the user get a glimpse of what the article talks about. Sort of like a short version of how the article progresses.
This is Tehelka's entertainment/leisure section. After all the heated and political articles and debates in the magazine, this section comes in providing a leisurely read to the reader. Here, the typography is slightly different and Blue is used instead of red. This section underwent major changes in the layout and the old magazine layout is given on the right.
“...a complete revamp of Tehelka was suggested as it emerged from the ashes of it’s horrible controversy. The new look would be bolder and cleaner and would symbolize Tehelka moving forward.”