The Independent's distinctive "viewspaper" front pages need reinvention because they can be "boring", Simon Kelner has admitted in an interview as he prepares to hand over the title's editorship.
Kelner also revealed that the Independent would have full colour and a redesign by September and why he thought the internet was a secondary priority to print.
He made the comments as he prepares to hand over after a decade in charge of the Independent to former Observer editor Roger Alton at the end of the month.
Kelner will remain editor-in-chief of the Independent and Independent on Sunday and become managing director of the titles in his new role at Independent News & Media.
He said: "We are very honest with ourselves - we think sometimes our front page can be boring. Sometimes it just does not work, but when we get it right, we get it freaking right."
Kelner was speaking in an interview published in Designing News, a new book by the firm that redesigned the Independent papers and the Daily Mirror, Cases Associats, launched at the World Association of Newspapers congress in Gothenburg.
"I think if you do the same type of front page every day, it is possible to overdo the formula. We need to reinvent it," he added.
"A paper is a living organism that changes over time. If you look at the paper now it looks completely different from a few years ago and is probably completely different from what it will look like in a few years' time."
Kelner confirmed that the Independent would become full colour in September and it would redesign before then, "whether we like it or not".
He vowed to maintain the Independent as a campaigning newspaper and did not indicate that he was in any way retreating from its viewspaper front pages.
But he added that while the Independent's front page is radical, this does not marry with the rest of the paper, which is presented in a traditional format inside.
Straightforward information should account for a very small part of newspapers, Kelner said.
"There has to be a central element of the newspaper that is about giving people information, but the idea that people buy a newspaper as a primary source of information is as old-fashioned as the horse-drawn carriage," he added.
Kelner maintained that the internet should be a secondary priority because no one had worked out how to make money from it.
"Print is still a much more powerful brand than any version of the same on the internet. The idea that people will stop reading a product in print, whatever it might be, is nonsense," he said.
"I have the impression that the internet is like going into a bar where everybody is shouting, whereas when I read a newspaper it is much easier.
"I am absolutely convinced that a newspaper has much more authority, more experience and more power and that this is the reason advertisers persist with us."
Alton will oversee the Independent redesign when he takes over the editor's chair at the start of July.
He will be collaborating with Cases Associats, the Spanish design specialists who previously worked on the Independent's switch to a tabloid format in 2003.
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