May 20, 2009
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.
But what about the design? In their editor’s letter, Jon Meacham and Fareed Zakaria explain their concept of a new magazine for a changing world, and talk of bringing us as ‘visually rich an experience as the great monthlies of old… Harold Hayes’s Esquire or Willie Morris’s Harper’s but on a weekly basis’.
If that’s the bar they’re seeking to reach, they have some way to go.
The cover looks promising. As Mark notes, there is a Tibor Kalman-like feel to the bleed image with text centred across it. It is at least exciting-looking, although it offers little clues as to how the title will cope with more complex cover stories in the future.
Inside, though, the redesign is flat, muddled and often inappropriate. The contents page, above, is a case in point. The masthead is repeated across the top of the page with the letter ‘S’ deleted to leave the words ‘New week’. Unless I’m missing something here, this is a bit of of tricksy over-design that doesn’t suit a magazine claiming depth and intelligence. The same goes for the heading ‘InternationaList’ below.
These two spreads, above and below, are the Obama interview as trailed on the cover. The designer is trying to do something clever with the pictures, extending them to run them behind the text. But which spread is the lead one? Each spread seems to have its own headline. Very strange. And one spread features a black and white shot, the other colour – not unherard of, but in this context a distraction.
But at least the Obama piece shares a consistent aproach to typography and design with other parts of the issue. Other features jump all over the place, the choice of fonts and grid seemingly selected at random and with little consideration for the photography and illustration or for the magazine as a whole.
I’ve flicked through the issue again and again, trying to comprehend what’s going on. And my conclusion doesn’t change. This is a mess of a redesign, done in response to a more open and ambitious brief than Time’s Luke Hayman revamp but falling massively short of that project. Everything about it says ‘unfinished’ to me. The lack of care and attention paid to the detailing, the clumsiness of some of the typography and the amount of unresolved problems all speak of a project being launched before it was ready.
All of which is a real shame. The concept of the weekly news magazine may well reaching its sell-by date, but it is astonishing to see one of the leading examples of the genre act so helplessly as it struggles to survive.
31 Comments
Comment on May 20, 2009 by Mr. McGinnis says:
suh-NAP
Comment on May 21, 2009 by magaziner says:
Your review is right on. This is a huge disappointment. The prospect of seeing what a firm with the skills of Number 17 could do with an institution like Newsweek was terribly exciting — and even though you can’t fully assess a redesign until it’s been played out for awhile, this one doesn’t look like it will age well.
Comment on May 21, 2009 by Josh says:
yikes! but great critique.
Comment on May 21, 2009 by misha smetana says:
looks like the “new week” thing could be their way to slowly introduce a new name of the magazine
Comment on May 21, 2009 by Andrew says:
I found the body copy font, Archer, very difficult to read. There’s some quite good content in there, and it does, by the way it reads, differentiate itself from Time. But it doesn’t prove quite compelling enough to be a weekly read.
Inside, is indeed a bit of a mess, editorially and visually. It feels like they’ve started to produce a monthly, but stopped a quarter of the way through the design process, with everything unfinished.
Maybe it’ll be better in four issues’ time..
Comment on May 21, 2009 by James Kelleher says:
Archer as a body font? Oh dear. Fine for a frou-frou recipe book, not so good for a Newsweek essay.
It’s a bit of a pity that the design seems to be caught between two stools, neither sober enough or eccentric enough, because I reckon the way they’re driving the editorial is quite smart. Perhaps it needs a few issues to work the kinks out.
Comment on May 21, 2009 by Sam Flamsteed says:
I wonder if the writer of this critique realizes that he or she was looking at the international edition of Newsweek and not one that’s distributed in the United States. From the writeup, I suspect not. D’oh!
Comment on May 21, 2009 by Halka says:
My guess:
Better prototypes were committee’d to death by executives uninformed about graphic design, resulting in the uninspired mess currently in circulation.
Comment on May 21, 2009 by jeremy says:
Sam – are the two editions so different?
Comment on May 21, 2009 by Steve Sweitzer says:
I feel like I lost a close friend. I’m not sure who their target audience is but it’s no longer me. I just canceled 30+ years of subscribing and signed on with Time. At least they are trying to cover news.
As a photographer, I was thrilled to read about the planned “visually rich experience” but I sure couldn’t find it in the magazine I received.
I totally agree with Vanity Fair writer Michael Wolff who is quoted as telling industry executives in New York last week: “If Newsweek is around in five years, I’ll buy you dinner.”
Comment on May 21, 2009 by Andrew says:
I bought the US edition – can’t see any big differences…
Comment on May 22, 2009 by christopher says:
The US edition matches the examples you show, obama cover story, etc, Probably international edition has a few unique pages, but its the same design.
Comment on May 23, 2009 by Eric says:
the design is so “american” looking
Comment on May 24, 2009 by Nicole says:
I’m with James, Archer as a typeface for body copy is a cringe-worthy decision. I can’t help but feel an attempt to reside on the ‘cusp’ of a new typeface sensation is a little awkward here.
Comment on May 25, 2009 by nerdluck says:
“committee’d to death by executives uninformed about graphic design…” still laughing my ass off of this comment… This is probably the case
Comment on May 25, 2009 by Yorkali says:
Excellent design, great new direction. Many print publications could learn much from this. MUCH!!!
Comment on May 25, 2009 by Herbert says:
I fully agree with the critique. This design has lost all personality and direction. How very unfortunate!
Comment on May 25, 2009 by Doktor says:
actually with some evolvement and paired with good content, especially good photography I think this could work. In the longterm they will have to come up with something better then just a more modern and clean look and more helpful then ridiculous details but I actually have a feeling this even could work for them right now
Comment on May 27, 2009 by ANC says:
In three words, “What a mess.” In two words, “God awful.” In one word, “Crap.” Time to close out my subscription and those of my away-at-school children.
Comment on May 27, 2009 by dario says:
Let’s just be honest: it’s horrible
Comment on May 28, 2009 by DK says:
OK, but what did people think of The Atlantic redesign by Pentagram? Curious.
Comment on June 9, 2009 by Jerry says:
The off-putting redesign is a reflection of the off-putting editorial choices that Newsweek has made since Jon Meacham took control of the magazine. I feel sad that a magazine that meant so much to me for so many years has chosen to alienate so many of its long-time supporters.
Comment on June 19, 2009 by Pat says:
Have been slightly obsessed w/ this redesign because Number 17 is so good, and Newsweek, a part of the mothership that broke Watergate, is a very important magazine.
Yet, this is the worst re-launch/redesign I’ve ever seen. I would love to hear 17 explain what happened. I turn the pages and I cannot fathom how anyone could differentiate edit/ad/advertorial. The entire book looks like paid content.
This is a debacle.
As others have mentioned, it feels like design by democracy. Groupthink won, and I fear it may be the magazine’s demise.
Very much want to hear a response from the designers. Good, clean, precise, important design is paramount now. This is what will keep print alive.
If Newsweek was attempting to look serial, blog-afied, of the moment, it was an absolute failure.
Fix it. Please.
Comment on July 20, 2009 by Andrew Boardman says:
I’m slightly late, but this is a great review and I agree with gusto. All of the typography in the redesign, to me, is a “distraction,” to use your phrasing. I actually took a stab at redesigning Newsweek on Deckchairs with, I think, some mild success.
Comment on July 23, 2009 by Juliette Wolf-Robin says:
I am so relieved to read the comments on this blog. I’ve been filled with dread each week as Newsweek arrives and wondered if it was only me that felt such disappointment in what must have been a grand effort at creating a new look. Many of the spreads look as though they are “advertising” spreads meant to look like editorial. Confusing, and yes “unfinished” looking. What a shame.
Comment on July 24, 2009 by Don says:
After weeks of frustration and disappointment, I finally threw in the towel and cancelled my subscription when it came time to renew and, yes, I too feel like I’ve been betrayed and lost a dear friend. I certainly agree with the comments above. I wonder if maybe the designers who put this mess together each week are visual people who simply aren’t readers, and just don’t care to make it inviting or easy to scan for worthiness (is this article worth my time…). Even the pull quotes seem thoughtlessly selected, and seldom nail down the heart of the article to help us see when there’s something of value here. The designers just seem to not want to be bothered with wrestling with and synthesizing the text to find compelling insights and observations to entice and encourage readers.
Comment on July 31, 2009 by Marty King says:
Our household has subscribed to Newsweek for 60 years, ever since my husband started college. We are heart-broken to see what has happened to our beloved news magazine. I always relied on Newsweek to cover important stories that I might have missed during the preceding week; in other words to give a synopsis of the news. I feel cheated, as there is so little real news now. The font weird and light, making it hard to read; ads are indistinguishable from columns, and the organization of the magazine is confusing. There are redundancies in repeating the contents at the start of each section as well as on the title page, such a waste! There is way too much white space. The arty manipulation of type and photos is painful to see. We will not renew our subscription because we feel that the magazine we loved has been taken away from us. What a shame!
Comment on August 4, 2009 by David Ross says:
Design sucks. No doubt about it. Basically, the design does nothing to enhance the content. However, does this really cause some of the people here to stop reading it? Again and again I’m reminded of the importance of good content when I read beautiful magazines with cr*p or worse – no – content. I’m sick of content becoming secondary in magazines these days (yes, design and culture magazines, im looking at you). Some of the mags I read religiously have really quite average design but great content (Record Collector being one). I guess I’m bringing this up because the new content approach of Newsweek sounds intriguing. Oh, and did I mention the redesign sucks?
Comment on September 23, 2009 by Tyler Courtenay says:
It’s unfortunate to see such criticism about the new Newsweek. I’m not sure how many of you are graphic designers or work in the field, but I can tell you, coming from a successful freelancing graphic designer, that the layouts and overall redesign is MUCH more aesthetically pleasing than the former version. They have kept the overall newsweek design and simply updated it. Too bad to see such ignorant criticism.
Comment on October 1, 2009 by Fostering The Community Spirit – An Offline Lesson « Devendra Shrikhande: Carving the Apex says:
[...] redesigns are always interesting, especially if it is a rag you are familiar with, like say, Newsweek. While it has all the usual elements of print design, with a change in fonts, style, what [...]
Comment on November 24, 2009 by chris says:
I recently saw this redesign and had to research who did it. As Art Director of a very editorial focused magazine, I found the redesign completely lacking. There is no flow for the magazine, it’s difficult to differentiate sections. The feature story designs are lacking. I was not impressed. Glad it was a common thought and I’m glad I don’t receive Newsweek anymore, it’s tough to follow now. (And, I did like the Altantic redesign, btw.)
