Improve design of leading news app

Omni is a news service for the Swedish market, currently available as an iPhone app with more platforms on the way.

The purpose is to give the serious news reader an easy and convenient way to read news, quickly get an overview but at the same time give access to different perspectives of each story.

This is achieved by writing a short summary and provide links and other resources to other news sources. The user may customize the news experience to his/her liking by using the news mix.

http://www.omni.se

The app is released and available in App Store. The user interface and interaction flow went through many iterations.

Since then iOS7 was released introducing a new look and we also feel additional polish and touch up can be done to improve the overall feel and presentation of the app.

We want to have the design revised, improved and polished. Do not change the user interface flow and do not introduce any new interaction elements and follow the brand guidelines outlined below. Besides that, come up with a new or improved design that fits with what is expected out of a new iOS7 app. Do not feel restricted by the dark theme in the screenshots - a light theme is totally ok too.
Stick to the brand, but feel free to be creative.

BRAND
The main element of the logotype is the circle, which is a reoccuring theme in the design and user interface. Do not change the logo.

The font used is Benton Sans, both in the native elements of the app and the news text. Please use Benton Sans where possible. You will find several variants of the font in the attached file.

The target audience is the serious news reader, or news junkie. Someone who want to be on top of what is going on in terms of news.

The tone of how the news are written is very straight forward, clear, no fuss and directly to the point. Also the visual communication should be in line with the tone.

ATTACHED FILES
-The three main views of the app, that need to be redesigned.
- Logo (wordmark) black/white
- Icons currently used in app
- Benton font

NOTE
We will be doing a lot of development the coming months (and years) and may very possible form a long term working relationship with the winning designer.

Omni

KEY CONCEPTS
Some key concepts and terminology of the app.

*Article*
The short article displayed in the article view, written by an Omni editor.

*Brief*
First lines of text of an article displayed in list views a including large/small image (optionally).

*Resources*
Resources provided below the text in an article view. May be links to external news services or to background info (e.g. wikipedia), images, subheading, text block, map, etc.

*Tags*
Each article has tags (topics) related to the content. A user can tap a tag to open a list view containing all articles with that tag. A tag can also be followed, then appearing in left menu under "Mina Ämnen" (My Topics).

*Category*
Each article is assigned a category (like Sports, Entertainment, Tech, International, etc). Note that colors are used to differentiate categories throughout the app.

*Newsmix*
The user may select a threshold per category of what categories to display on their start page (e.g. no Sports, but everything in Entertainment)

VIEWS
For this task, we've selected some of the views of the app to have redesigned.

*Start view*
Contains briefs of news from all categories. User may toggle between two sorting modes; Toppnyheter (Top news) are news weighted by importance in the given moment, "Senaste nytt" (Latest news) are in chronological order. Each brief contains a headline, the first lines of text from the full article, a time stamp and an image (optional). Note that these short briefs can be presented in two different sizes.

*Article view*
The full article (short text only), including external resources below the text and at the bottom the tags associated with the article. The upper right button is the action button that allows user to share article using Facebook, etc. The category color is used in the top line and the dot in the beginning of the text.

*Left menu*
The left menu is accessible throughout the app and allow the user to search, select category, tags followed and some additional info.

Please test the app (available worldwide, but in Swedish):
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/omn…&ls=1&mt=8