New New Statesman
It’s easy to focus on the dramatically different when looking at redesigns. But instead of revolution, magazines sometimes need quiet change, and the recent revamp of the New Statesman is a perfect example of the ongoing development of a design project.
Newsweek relaunch
In what will come to be seen as either an extraordinarily brave or an unbelievably foolish move, Newsweek has carried out a major reinvention this week, on the eve of its 75th anniversary. In an attempt to deal with the changing context within which the weekly news magazine finds itself today, it has accepted that raw news is sourced elsewhere, and that it should therefore now feature only two types of story: reported narrative to illuminate important stories, and argued essays. Unlike rival Time, which relaunched last year, this weekly news magazine no longer has a News section. Brave stuff, and the decision is getting plenty of comment online, including a withering comment from US editorial design guru Roger Black to the effect that the magazine could now afford to change it’s name as it was no longer about news nor needed to be weekly.
Interview update
M/M Paris have now taken over the design and art direction of Interview, with the first sign of change being the revised logo, above (Fabien Baron’s short-lived version below).
New AR
A few weeks back I revealed the new logo for the Architectural Review, the first part of the title’s first redesign for twenty years. So how does the re-design itself look?
The end of white space as we know it?
The latest re-design of Good Housekeeping magazine, launching this week, declares war on white space.
‘Creative use of white space is about as realistic as a banker’s bonus,’ says editor Lindsay Nicholson in the Guardian. ‘We are looking at a really dense magazine packed full of information. It is also more ecological with more information for your page.’ To achieve this, new art director John Tennant has revised the design to pack in articles up to 25% larger.
Part of me applauds this – it’s not unlinked to the serious approach to content taken by the likes of Monocle and Intelligent Life. But both those titles rely deeply on white space alongside their longer features.
Is cramming more into less space really more ecological, or is it just cheaper to manufacture?
Full story here (thanks Simon).
Architectural Review redesign
Creative director Violetta Boxhill recently left Icon to join Architectural Review. Here’s her first development, a vastly improved logo created with art director Cecilia Lindgren. I’m looking forward to seeing the redesigned magazine later this month.
Things To Look At has a look back at the history of AR.
Colophon2009 – the book
With just over a week until Colophon2009, (link mended) preparations continue. While the Luxembourg office goes into planning overdrive, there’s been a flurry of print design here in London. The venue banners went to print this morning, the event Guide is just completing now, and last week the new Colophon book ‘We Make Magazines’ went to press. That’s the cover, above.
The follow-up to 2007’s ‘We Love Magazines’, the new book features interviews with the makers of over 100 independent magazines, as well as plenty of sample pages from the featured publications. Like the first book, it’s written by my friend and Colophon co-curator Andrew Losowsky and designed by me at John Brown, where I worked with a couple of excellent collaborators from LCC, current student Alex Hunting and recent graduate Lars Laemmerzahl.
‘We Make Magazines’ will be available in bookshops later this month, but buy a FlashPass for Colophon2009 and you’ll get a free advance copy in your welcome pack.
Distributors Gestalten has more images online.
And YCN have the section-opener illustrations by Jean Jullien.
The end of ‘mass’?
One failing US magazine is facing up to it’s bleak future with a radical plan. Newsweek is redesigning, increasing the quality of its paper, and narrowing it’s target audience.
Talking in the NYTimes, Tom Ascheim, Newsweek’s chief executive, says ‘Mass for us is a business that doesn’t work… we did it for a long time, successfully, but we can’t anymore.’ The title has seen sales drop from 3.1m to an expected 1.5m. It aims to get the remaining readers to pay 50% 100% more for their subscriptions – that’s a rise from $25 a year to $50.
That’s still only a tenth of the newsstand price, though.
Guardian Weekend redesign
Much as I loved the highly praised Guardian redesign, one element always felt weak compared to the rest – Saturday’s Weekend magazine. A strange situation, seeing as how the newspaper became more magazine-like in many respects. How come the magazine itself got lost in the process?
Anyhow, seems the Guardian team, led by Mark Porter, realised that too. So last weekend it became the first part of the Guardian package to receive a revamp since the big 2005 redesign. The front cover is much stronger, with more scope for expression (above), and Mark has further spreads on bis own blog here.
Much improved, I think.
Happy/sad
The latest work from Luke Hayman and team is a redesign of Harvard alumni magazine 01238 – cover above. The Pentagram site has descriptions and images of what was to have been the launch issue – unfortunately the title closed before the issue went to press. See a digital version here.
This closure follows the end of another recent Luke Hayman-designed project, Radar. Tempting though it would be to imply that Hayman is the link between the two closures, a more realistic link must be that the two projects were on the verge of failure and lurched into a redesign as a final attempt to survive. Wrong!
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