Now the Observer has followed both its own sister paper The Guardian and, to a lesser extent, The Independent, by moving to a smaller size - the "Berliner". Time to reconsider my choice.

It's still bigger than the Independent, roughly 30%. The first thing I noticed when I picked it up is that it's still impossible to read as a single paper. Because its sections, all eight of them, are folded and compiled separately, it is necessary to lay some aside while you read one at a time. I know this isn't the way most people read Sunday papers, preferring instead to have them spread out in bed or on the kitchen table, but the Guardian has this same drawback during the week when people are far more likely to be reading it on trains, buses or crowded benches. A number of factors are probably involved here - the printing press technology the Guardian group have invested in, the sheer amount of information to pack into the paper, and of course the need to set the paper apart style-wise. However, the Times and Independent can do it day after day. The Guardian Group may have got this decision wrong.

New look
Once you're inside the new look is very refreshing. Full colour on every page, they say, and they're not lying. Great splashes of it everywhere, though mainly from adverts and photos. The main paper is split into four tastefully colour-coded sections - 7 days, world, comment and news. These use a single highlight colour spread throughout the section for all subheads, pull-quotes and sidebars and, most usefully, for a main banner across the top of each spread. The colour coding feels pervasive and the uniformity of use does not detract from the holistic feel of the most important section of the paper. The layout isn't immediately comparable to something you might see on the web, but it is far from impossible to reproduce, a sign perhaps that the Guardian group have kept one eye on future media cross-pollination.

Supplements
The supplements Escape, Business, Sport are also distinguished by their own highlight colour, and again the design feels well thought out and satisfying. In these feature-heavy sections the new pale blue background for sidebars is most noticeable - there's big chunks of it on every other page but it never weighs the spread down or feels gratuitous.

Sport
The Sport section has obviously had some serious thought put into it, perhaps reflecting the ever-increasing TV presence of football - the sport takes up just under half of this supplement. The amount of information presented is staggering, but bold use of colour and focussing on the essential information prevent the whole thing turning into an unintelligible mess. As you would expect photography features heavily, but they've done well to bring in team logos in a section titled "The Verdict" which feels distinctly "bloggy". This is further reinforced by comments from fans below their own strapline - more often than not a website such as this Arsenal blog.

This section also shows the most promising advance yet - that of getting readers involved in a dialogue with the paper and each other. View will be aired, queries answered, verdicts given and the ubiquitous mobile-phone picture can be submitted to win a prize. Some of the best magazines thrive on a unique relationship between reader and publication, whether that relationship is love-hate, proprietary or otherwise, and it's something I have rarely seen in the UK press outside of the lofty letters to the editor in the Times. This is also an obvious point of integration with the Observer/Guardian's acclaimed and authoritative website, and an exciting one too.

TV Guide
The TV Guide has been evicted from it's previous home at the back of the magazine, where it never felt quite right, but at least there it was on quality glossy paper. The new one feels a bit cheap, but is uncluttered and gives the main Freeview channels almost as much exposure as the standard terrestrial ones. If I have to look at one more TV guide where BBC4 is hidden in a corner in 6pt text and no time highlights I think I might go blind.

Review
The Review sections, which always felt undernourished and an afterthought, continues to do so. Its colour palette is abandoned after page three and the whole thing is overrun with photography, mainly of celebs. It does, however, feature just about the only illustration in the whole paper, a worrying Clockwork Orange-esque figure by Marc Quinn. The Guardian manages a fair amount of illustration throughout the week and especially on Saturday, and I'm not sure if I miss it or net in the Observer yet. Philip French's film section looks expanded - a good thing, he's a thoughtful and honest reviewer. But maybe the huge movie stills plastered in the middle of the copy just make it seem longer than before. The CD/DVD review section still feels perfunctory, but I doubt any serious music buyer really bases their next purchase on its anonymous advice.

Conclusions
One of the best features of the Observer is its series of magazines: Sport, Music, Food and now a new one - Woman. We'll have to see what the others are like over the coming weeks, but judging by Sport the only major change in the existing mags will be downsizing to around A4. These magazines justify the purchase price alone, and the Observer has rightly enough left the design and content intact.

The only possible teething problem I noticed was some rather odd zebra-striped subheads and banners. They're graphically incongruous and I'll be interested to see if they survive the first or subsequent iterations of the new design.

Will I switch back from the Independent? On this evidence I may well have to start picking and choosing dependant on what features are running that week.