The Fourth
A newsroom with a brand to match its beat.
What was
broken.
The Fourth has a voice: irreverent, Indore-first, openly suspicious of everyone selling something. Driven by truth, so help them god. But the brand around that voice was generic, and the site loaded like an apology.
Worse, the newsroom publishes everywhere: website, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, X, LinkedIn. Six platforms, no system. Every story got reshaped by hand, so speed, the one advantage a local desk has, kept slipping.
What we
did about it.
Bottle the attitude instead of taming it, then build the machine that carries it: a fast site and a motion system that puts every story on all six platforms inside the news cycle.
Bottle the attitude
The masthead and identity carry the newsroom's wit instead of sanding it down. Readers who came for the tone now recognize it before reading a word.
Design for reading speed
Type, layout, and ad slots rebuilt so articles load fast and read clean on cheap phones. Bounce dropped because there was nothing left to bounce off.
One story, six shapes
A motion and template system turns each story into platform-native cuts for all six channels, inside the cycle instead of after it.
- 01Strategy
Positioning & editorial voice
A written position the newsroom can hand to any writer, guest or partner. It bottles the irreverent Indore voice instead of sanding it down, and sets the boundaries on what the desk will and will not run.
- 02Identity
Masthead & identity
Identity built to carry the attitude rather than tone it down, so a reader recognises the desk before reading a word of any story.
- 03Website
News website with live sections
A publishing site rebuilt for reading speed on cheap phones. Type, layout and ad slots were redesigned together so monetisation never breaks the reading experience.
- 04Social
Social motion package
One story turned into platform-native cuts for all six channels the desk publishes to, inside the news cycle instead of after it.
- 05Strategy
SEO & Discover setup
Technical structure, metadata and news indexing set up so the desk surfaces in Google Discover and for the local searches an Indore newsroom actually competes for.
Website
Built around one action rather than a list of pages, and structured so the visitor is never more than one scroll from the thing they came for.
- Structured around one action, not a list of pages
- Designed and built by the same team
- Editable by your team after handover
- Tested on real devices before launch
A publishing site rebuilt for reading speed on cheap phones. Type, layout and ad slots were redesigned together so monetisation never breaks the reading experience.
Identity
Drawn against real applications at both ends of the scale, so the mark holds embroidered and at sixteen pixels without needing two versions.
- Explored against real applications, not a slide
- Tested at the smallest and largest sizes it will be used
- Typography and colour chosen for accessibility and print
- A written system your team can extend
Identity built to carry the attitude rather than tone it down, so a reader recognises the desk before reading a word of any story.
Social
Built as a system with a rhythm, so the feed stays alive without depending on one person's free evening.
- A system with a posting rhythm, not one-off posts
- Sized natively for each feed
- Captions and safe areas handled
- Volunteer-proof, so it survives turnover
Strategy
Written so a new hire can read it and make a correct decision without asking, which is the only version of a brand guide that works.
- Written so a new hire can use it alone
- Grounded in customer interviews, not opinion
- Covers the decisions that actually come up
- Everything downstream traces back to it
A written position the newsroom can hand to any writer, guest or partner. It bottles the irreverent Indore voice instead of sanding it down, and sets the boundaries on what the desk will and will not run.
Technical structure, metadata and news indexing set up so the desk surfaces in Google Discover and for the local searches an Indore newsroom actually competes for.
Asked
often.
How do you brand news without biasing it?
Authority comes from consistency and correction policies, not slogans. The identity signals seriousness; the journalism does the rest.
What about ad revenue pressure on speed?
Ad slots were designed into the layout with size caps, so monetization never breaks the reading experience.
Who runs the site day to day?
Their desk, on a CMS built for publishing speed, with us on call for the rest.