Close-Up: Newsmaker - A year in the life of the first quality compact editor.

The Independent's Simon Kelner has his sights set on The Guardian.

It's become a sport across the national newspaper business to take credit for The Independent's decision to launch a compact edition.

Everybody reckons they thought of it first. But The Independent, under its editor, Simon Kelner, bit the bullet and a year ago launched a tabloid-sized edition alongside its broadsheet in London.

It has proved a circulation success (its August sales were 20 per cent up on the previous year to 262,588). So much so that in May, it dropped its broadsheet edition and became the first 100 per cent quality compact.

And Kelner, who has edited the title for six-and-a-half years, is keen to nail the myth that the launch had been on the blocks and ready to go for years. In fact, he says, his inspiration was drawn from the world of FMCG marketing and a trip to the supermarket to buy toothpaste. Usually, the observation that Colgate toothpaste comes in several sizes, plus pump action, would lead to social excommunication but for Kelner it turned out to be a 'eureka' moment.

'It seemed to me that every consumer product had a variety of shapes and sizes and designs to attract the consumer,' he explains. 'And then I thought newspapers are the only product where the shape and size is dictated by the producer rather than the consumer's wishes. So I thought: would it be possible to 'Colgate-ise' our newspaper?'

We meet in his spacious office in a corner of The Independent's editorial floor in Docklands. He's busier than usual because it's party conference season. He's just done two days at the Liberal Democrat conference and will spend three days at Labour's.