Independent redesign: Bigger, brasher - yes, it's Alton's full-colour Indy

The Independent has become the latest UK paper to roll off shiny new colour presses. There's even a big red flash at the top of today's front page announcing the "new full colour edition" to prove it. Of course, this takes up a lot of room so it's understandable that the font size for the £1 price tag has had to be a bit smaller.

As is usual these days, colour means a redesign, although in this case it's not a radical restyling. Most of the fonts and some of the detailing remain from the previous Cases i Associats design of 2005. But editor Roger Alton (formerly editor of the Observer, which is published by Guardian News & Media) brings a lot of energy and a little vulgarity - in the nicest possible way - which makes the paper feel surprisingly different.

The logo gets bigger and the long-standing Indy eagle is now in red. One familiar sans serif font (Whitney) has been replaced by another (Amplitude), but the new font (curiously described in the editor's letter as "more elegant") is bolder, brasher and much more macho.

There is a scattering of the current newspaper design tropes (double-decker intros to news stories, quotes and stats between rules breaking up columns of text), and a system of thick and thin rules that's even more complex than the one it replaces. The grid changes from a mix of six and seven columns to five, the same as the Guardian and the Times.

Colour is everywhere. Section fronts have bold sans colour-coded labels and even comment and obits get heavy coloured folios with big bold type in them which are very unsympathetic to the material beneath.

The second section has a new (but strangely familiar) name - "Life" - a new design, and a new pitch; it will be themed day-by-day with a strong emphasis on consumer issues.

The volume here is higher if anything. Logo and headlines are in a big, bold clarendon, the amplitude sans serif continues from the main book, type gets bigger and colours bolder and brighter. It's very in your face, sort of halfway between the Times's T2 and the Your Life section in the revamped Mirror.

So, elegance and discipline are out and verve and gusto are in. Pages are denser, layouts looser, headline sizes bigger (and even white-on-black in Sport). The overall effect is to bring a very welcome vitality, which the old paper lacked (with the exception of the front page). But in contrast to the Guardian's Berliner project and recent developments at the Times, the positioning is clearly downmarket.

And a word about that editor's letter. Editors, if you really believe in your redesigns can you try a bit harder to convince us? Alton's reads: "In addition to our fresh new look we have introduced a number of improvements to the paper's structure and content ... colour-coded signposting ... easier to navigate ... a more modern and elegant font", and so on. Much like every editor's letter about every recent newspaper redesign, then.

Mark Porter is creative editor at the Guardian
24th September