Der Spiegel is a German weekly magazine, founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner. Today it is has the largest weekly circulation in Europe (840,000 copies). Der Spiegel is mostly famous for its investigative journalism.
The original logo for Spiegel Online was created in 1997 and stayed with the platform for a bit less than ten years. It was a horizontally stretched rectangular banner divided into red and black halves, with the bold white serif “Spiegel” written across the red part, and the lightweight “Online”, set in a more elegant font, across the black one.
The redesign of 2006 has refined the color palette of the Spiegel Online logo, darkening up the red shade, and using a more burgundy tone now. With this new scheme, the badge started looking more confident and serious, evoking a sense of a reputable platform, which provides its readers with only verified information and expert opinions.
In 2016 the Spiegel Online logo was redesigned again, keeping both fonts from previous versions, but setting the lettering in burgundy now, and placing it against a plain white background. The only difference in the inscription was the bolder lines of the “Online” part.
Der Spiegel means “The Mirror” in German and the magazine does its job in reflecting everything happening in the world perfectly.
The magazine’s hard-hitting news approach won it the Europe’s biggest circulation and an abundance of advertisers. It is respected both for its coverage of news and for its concise writing, and it is generally regarded as one of the best news weeklies in Europe.
But for many people the most iconic part of Der Spiegel is its logo. The Der Spiegel white nameplate on a red background has always been hand-lettered but it’s lettering bears a strong resemblance to the City Black typeface designed by Georg Trump in 1930.
Der Spiegel has a custom multi-weight upper and lowercase typeface family (SpiegelSans font), which is being used both in paper magazines and on the Spiegel Online website.