So, not many people know this story, and I can’t think of a better time to tell it.

Around the time that the four of us were building The Ken, and this is really the very early days; Rohin and I had a certain idea about how The Ken’s stories should look. While we had a temporary thing going on the ghost-blogging platform, where we were publishing our pre-launch stories, Rohin had started working on building a website. Something permanent. Mostly by himself and with the help of one of our earlier developers, Vinay. Rohin liked the idea of building The Ken on Drupal (ed: actually Rohin first liked the idea of building it on shiny NodeJS frameworks like KeystoneJS or PencilBlue, on which he wasted the first month)

Work started. You know, everyone’s busy and once in a while the team gets updates—hey this is how it looks, the fonts, the images, the layout—with the whole coming together process. Fast forward, we are close to the launch and guess what, no website. Drupal kept crashing. (ed: Rohin kept learning). It just wouldn’t work, however hard Rohin tried. We were all on the edge. It was a tense moment for the four of us.

Anyhow, fast forward, Rohin junked the idea of Drupal (after NodeJS) and put together a website on WordPress. I will be the first one to say this, it wasn’t pretty but it got the job done. It had most of the elements needed to tell a good story. So while we missed a launch date, Rohin came through in very quick time. I guess, just a few days.

So yes, that’s the backstory but exactly five months in, it sets the context of how far along The Ken has come and where we are headed next. And this is where The Ken redesign comes in. We’ve been on it for months with the talented and equally opinionated designers at Beard Design, and we are thrilled to bring this refreshing, clutter-free, reading experience for our subscribers and readers.

Simple. Elegant

The design is simple and pleasant. There aren’t too many moving parts and of course, no advertisements. The choice of fonts is elegant and easy on the eye, all put together to give you a comfortable reading experience. For a story of a 1,000 to 10,000 words.

Quick Takeaway

We value your time. This is where our stories also put out the key takeaways right out the gate.

Easier navigation and no indefinite scrolling

We like writing about complex subjects but we want your reading experience to be simple. Which is why you’ll get to see The Ken’s range of journalism with just a click. Also, less scrolling.

Issues

Do not miss a single story from our journalists.

Multimedia and immersive storytelling

The Ken has been designed to tell immersive stories. We’ve attempted some of it before, and you will certainly see more of it in the next few months. We are thrilled with the possibilities of experimenting with tools on storytelling in the digital age.

In the works – exclusive subscriber apps

Many of you have been asking us for a smoother, richer more interesting way to read our stories. Our exclusive apps for iOS and Android are just getting ready to go into the oven, to get baked for you.

So tell us what you think – what works, what doesn’t, how we can improve, and what else we should be doing.