A newspaper for your phone, drafted on my own, that fed a real one
- Figma
- Prototyping
- Light + dark themes
- Role
- Solo design
- Every screen, in Figma
- Product
- The Newspaper
- An online news app
- Stage
- Concept
- Designed and prototyped, not built
- Screens
- 10, twice
- Each one in light and dark
- Designed
- April 2026
- On my own, as a draft
- Led to
- TMN · Satara Today
- It became that app's first draft
The brief
The Newspaper is an online news app I designed on my own in April 2026, as practice, a task I set myself: ten screens in Figma, each in light and dark, prototyped so it could be tapped through. It started as mine alone, and it didn't stay that way: the month after, it became the first draft of TMN · Satara Today.
The design
It opens like a paper: the masthead in a red serif, then the date and the city under it, Visakhapatnam here. Breaking news runs as a carousel of photos under the fold line, with the top stories listed below, each with its source, how long ago it went up and who wrote it.
An article keeps the paper's feel too: a large photo, a serif headline in the masthead's red, and the text set in full. Search starts from what's trending: topics to tap, and the hashtags people are following.
From the front page into the articles, prototyped in Figma.
Beside the app's own stories sit the papers people already read, like The Hindu, The Times of India and Hindustan Times, to explore as their front pages. A calendar lets you go back to another day's, and stories you save wait for you in one list.
Search, the papers and the calendar, prototyped.
Your profile keeps count of what you've saved, what you've published and who you follow, and holds your settings: your interests, your posts, the dark theme and feedback. Your interests are topics you add or take away, from India and Visakhapatnam to technology and sport.
A new post takes an image or video, a headline and up to 500 characters, then publishes from the bottom of the screen.
The profile and your saved stories, prototyped.
Every screen has a dark twin. The paper goes black, the text goes light, and the masthead keeps its red, so it still reads as the same paper at night.
What happened
The Newspaper was never built as itself. The next month, TMN's client asked for a news app in white, black and red, so I built the first draft of TMN · Satara Today on it, about 80% of it from here. The client wanted something more Gen Z, and the final design moved on, but it kept this draft's community feed. The Spotmies developers are building it now.
Designing with no brief and no client gave me a head start when a real one arrived: most of TMN's first draft came from here. TMN then taught me the other half: a draft made for yourself still has to be reshaped for the client's brand and audience.