The Globe and Mail is set to get a major facelift this fall.

In his opening remarks at the Institute of Communication Agencies Future Flash event today, Globe and Mail publisher and CEO Phillip Crawley said the paper will be set to unveil a ‘major redesign and relaunch’ on Oct. 1 this year.

The relaunched Globe and Mail will be printed on new Transcontinental printing presses that will allow the paper to print colour on every page, and print in up to four different paper stocks, all on a single press. This, Crawley said, means that the Globe will be able to do magazine-quality sections in its regular weekend paper – a benefit for advertisers who want magazine-quality ads produced within the shorter timeframe of a daily newspaper. Of the new look, Crawley said: ‘It looks like web, it looks like magazine and it looks like a newspaper.’

The ‘new’ Globe and Mail will debut on a Friday, unveiling a new design for the weekday paper that will differ significantly from the weekend edition, to reflect the different ways people consume content during the workweek and the weekend. During the week, people want their news quickly and easily, so the new look will deliver that with the expectation that people will continue to access the Globe throughout the day on the web and via mobile devices, noted Crawley. On the weekend, the Globe ‘is a treat’ for readers, he said, and the design and paper stock will reflect that. It will debut Saturday, Oct. 2.

‘It isn’t just about redesign – it’s a statement of faith in the future,’ he said. ‘We’re reconfiguring what a newspaper can do. We’re going to offer advertisers new options that they’ve never had before from us.’

Additionally, the Globe is set to debut an iPad application next month (the device arrives in Canada on May 28). Crawley said the paper has seen enough growth with its mobile products – it has a Kindle edition, multiple-platform apps and a mobile site – that it’s ‘commercially sensible to be spending our time and effort on it.’ Details on ad opps for the app were not revealed, but they mark an important delineation between the Kindle and the iPad, as the Kindle is ad-free due to its text-based design.