The Intercept website (2016)
The Intercept is an online publication by news organisation First Look Media, created and financed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. With editors Betsy Reed, Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, it vows to “produce aggressive, adversarial journalism across a wide range of issues”.
The website design is credited to Stéphane Elbaz who also drew the custom typeface TI Actu. A heavy sans, it features both proportional and monospaced versions used for headlines, navigation and high impact burst of text. Gerard Unger’s Neue Swift takes the role of body text, providing a sharp and credible image firmly rooted in the tradition of heavy news writing. Swift is also used in the logo, albeit with a slightly modified (sharper) lowercase ‘t’.
The website uses a palette of serious white and black, punctuated by deep greys and IK Blue. For feature work, high intensity colors provide a clear identity and break from the usual content. Overall, the tone captures the acute feeling of mass surveillance and the contemporary dystopia.
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Stéphane Elbaz goes into some of his design process in this talk at TypeParis in 2017.