Dear reader,

Coming up in this letter:

• The Economist’s data journalism gains its own place on paper
• Evan Hensleigh from our data team shares some code
• The Economist gets a fresh new look in print

The Economist’s data journalism team was created in 2015, partly as a response to the popularity of our daily charts and Graphic detail blog. But the newspaper has included charts and maps since long before that, as visual journalist Graham Douglas points out in his reflections on The Economist’s data visualisation from 1987 to today.

Now we’ve launched a print version of Graphic detail, to tell new stories through data visualisation. The first, in this week’s newspaper, charts every object ever launched into orbit (pictured above.) The Economist’s head of data journalism, Alex Selby-Boothroyd, explains more about the new section here.

Together with the new section in print, the data team decided to rethink another aspect of the publishing process. We always credit our sources and make transparent where the data have come from. But we would like to do more and share our data and code with you, whenever possible. Evan Hensleigh, a member of our data team, has set up a GitHub account for The Economist, and explains the rationale behind our decision in this article.

You’ll also notice other changes to your weekly edition. This week’s issue of The Economist has a refreshed look to complement our insight and analysis with a cleaner layout. That means new typefaces, stronger visual identities for our columns, and a cleaner, more easily navigable newspaper. Phil Kenny, head of graphics, and Stephen Petch, art director, discuss the challenges of reimagining a 175-year-old newspaper, and what links the pages of The Economist with railways, in this interview.

Tell us what you think about it by emailing redesign@economist.com.

Yours faithfully,

Marie Segger and Joshua Spencer

Data journalism fellow and social media fellow, The Economist