FOLIO: Section Blogs by Design and Production

How Cool Is Boston Magazine's May Issue Cover?

Bill Mickey — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:43:36 -0400

This is the cover for the May issue of Boston magazine. The story behind its creation is equally as awesome (the May issue was just days away from shipping when the bombs went off on that Monday; tweets and Facebook posts were employed to collect the actual shoes from runners.). Editor-in-chief John Wolfson provides the details here.

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10 Ways To Leverage Social During a Redesign

traphael — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:31:44 -0400

It seems like everyone is getting a face-lift these days: The Atlantic, WSJ.com, Redbook, the XO brand, Self. And whether you’re hitting refresh on a legacy brand or a newer dotcom, the redesign and relaunch of a publication is a big deal.

Social media is a powerful channel to communicate and share your new, highly visual story. You can use your social channels to protect the integrity of your brand while disseminating your new look, fresh voice and updated content.

Plus, it’s a plum opportunity to build some major brand cred.

Here are 10 ways to leverage social media if or when your brand redesigns:

1. Start a Thunderclap. It’s like a social flash mob. Sign up in advance and the program will share your celebratory message via Twitter and Facebook. Your followers will create a social tidal wave by tweeting/posting one message at the same time. Incentivize your followers like W did for their 40th Anniversary.

2. Give social the exclusive. Think like Beyoncé and unveil your new cover on Instagram or Tumblr. You want to reach a younger audience? Activate in their channel. And make it good—don’t skimp on content.

3. Promote your Twitter content. Own a hashtag to ensure that your material surfaces. This dovetails nicely if it’s tied to a franchise that’ll work across platforms.

4. Use Vine to capture behind-the-scenes snippets from the relaunch. Quirky moments that inspired the creative direction; art installations that influenced a clean, uncluttered, cover. Or try focusing on one theme: Glamour emphasizes fashion, VH1 opts for music over reality show content.

5. Have a consistent dialogue. Now is the time to be overactive and accessible. As the feedback (positive and negative) rolls in, respond. Tell commenters that you’re the same brand but have an updated image. Then provide a link to compelling or service-driven content. Are you seeing your brand tagged (@PopularSciene, @TeenVogue) on Instagram? Visit as many profiles as possible and return the love with a heart or a comment. Notice re-pins coming from the same people on Pinterest? Follow them back. Comment and re-pin THEIR content onto your boards.

6. Creative should be consistent, too. SELF’s Twitter backdrop is a compilation of the pillar categories that define our new look. Like the pages of our relaunch issue, our Google+ profile is highly visual, featuring a large, updated cover photo.

7. Take the road less traveled. Ditch the Facebook chat. Try Spreecast to deliver a smart roundtable discussion with celebrities, experts or editors included in your new issue. WSJ has a smart, informed channel on the live stream video platform and owned the space during New York Fashion Week 2013.

8. Get your editors and publishers involved. Use this as an opportunity to put a name and face to your experts via social. Include @ mentions of your editors in tweets. Encourage them to opine on topics within their beat. Have them RT content within their sphere of coverage. Like point-of-view publishing, readers like to connect with real people, not omniscient brands.

9. Establish a Google+ profile three months prior to the relaunch. Post once a day. Repurpose content from Facebook if you don’t have the bandwidth for original. The goal is to improve your search results in time for the launch--when you need all the eyes you can get.

10. Tidy up your social bios. Go ahead, flaunt your makeover. You look great. Include messaging within the “about us” section of each channel. Take inventory. Use this is an opportunity to freshen up your mission statements. Re-title and give your Pinterest boards a description. Update your You Tube channel.

I’d love to hear from you. In your opinion, what brands have done it right? Have you seen any social media fails? As a reader, what would you like to see? Tweet me @StephaniePaige.

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Examining The Atlantic and The New Republic Redesigns

Bill Mickey — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 14:22:29 -0400

Several years ago the American Society of Magazine Editors held a panel discussion that talked about the role of design and art direction in magazines. The general consensus was that it was important, but not essential. The evening ended with one of the participants rattling off a list of magazines that were considered great (and at the time, successful), but that basically looked bad.

It’s doubtful you could have that discussion today. Case in point: The Atlantic and The New Republic, two traditional, text-heavy magazines not historically known for strong visual identities, recently hired young creative director stars, with extensive consumer magazine experience, who have redesigned and visually energized both publications.

For past redesigns, both magazines hired outside design studios to revamp their looks, then handed them over to in-house art directors who were given limited scope in what they could accomplish visually. Not anymore. The Atlantic and New Republic redesigns were both done by their new creative directors, and the magazines’ visually-savvy editors have given them the directive to make the visuals and the design an integral part of the brand across multiple platforms.

Darhil Crooks is the new creative director at The Atlantic, hired in August after crafting a masterful redesign at Ebony. Crooks has extensive experience at consumer magazines like Esquire, and he’s brought that sensibility to his work at The Atlantic.

Meanwhile, The New Republic reached out to Dirk Barnett, the former creative director at Newsweek, who has a lengthy pedigree with Maxim, Blender, The New York Times’s Key and Play magazines, Premiere, and more. Working out of the New York office of the DC-based biweekly, Barnett helmed February’s complete visual transformation, changing everything from the logo to the paper stock.

Previous New Republic art directors Joseph Heroun and Christine Car produced some memorable covers and brought some strong illustration into the magazine over the past decade, but it always felt like they lacked the commitment from the editors to extend their talents to the magazine’s overall design and format.

From 2000-05, when The Atlantic was based in Boston, that magazine’s art director Mary Parsons (now at The American Prospect) helped build its reputation as a home for powerful, well-crafted illustration. A redesign by Michael Beirut and Pentagram in 2008 brought some much-needed modernizing and impact to the magazine’s design, but it never felt fully realized and executed after the initial excitement of the new look wore off.

Enter Crooks and Barnett, who with the support of smart, forward-looking editors (James Bennet at The Atlantic, new owner Chris Hughes and editor Franklin Foer at The New Republic) have brought new visual visions to their magazines that are crisp, energetic, holistic, and very 21st Century.

For The Atlantic redesign, Crooks tweaked the logo and inside typography, and added and revamped a number of columns and departments. There are new, visually-driven sections: By Design, a design solution column, and Chartist, “an infographic explanation of a seemingly complicated problem.”

The Atlantic’s new look is bright, engaging, modern, and very accessible. There are lots of graphic points of entry, elegant use of typography, rules, and white space, and smart illustrations. Most importantly, it’s all highly readable; there’s no doubt, even with the heightened design, that the text and imagery are given primacy.

Crooks says, “We wanted to do something that was energetic and had more visual impact, that was more reader-friendly, with added entry points and color. At the same time, I wanted to do something that was on brand. I didn’t want the design to be a distraction or too trendy.”

The new design of The Atlantic references consumer magazines like Rolling Stone and Esquire, and Crooks readily acknowledges the influence. “Both those magazines cover such a range of topics and visual approaches, and it all seems to work together. They are also examples of magazines that are able to take complicated, serious topics and make them visually entertaining.”

Crooks also reworked and reintroduced the The Atlantic’s Poseidon colophon, which was something he resurrected from earlier issues of the magazine. He describes it as “A new sexy god of the sea for the social media age.” (For those not familiar with the term, a colophon is an old-school term for a logo, or what used to be called a “printer’s mark,” that would appear on the title page or contents of a book or magazine.)

“What makes The Atlantic great is the writing and the ideas,” say Crooks. “I’ve tried to make the art as visually interesting as the text it illustrates, and the design to keep the readers in the story and turning the pages. It’s something most magazines do, but it’s a new approach for The Atlantic. My goal is to make each issue a unique experience.”

Crooks has just begun to apply the new look of The Atlantic to the magazine’s other platforms. He’s working on digital projects for the websites, and of course, the iPad app. The print redesign debuted with The Atlantic’s March 2013 issue, which is out now.

A Dual Challenge at TNR

Over at The New Republic, Dirk Barnett had a dual challenge. Not only did he need to completely overhaul the magazine’s look, but he had to do it with a format that accommodated a bi-weekly production schedule and a small staff. (The New Republic comes out 20 times a year—twice as often as The Atlantic.)

“The New Republic has never had a creative director in its entire 99-year history,” explains Barnett, “so it’s exciting to have this opportunity to bring a strong visual language to the brand. Frank Foer and Chris Hughes understand that smart design equals great business. Chris started Facebook, and that has one of the most iconic design voices in recent history. Our focus right now is building up a memorable brand experience.”

Most notable of the changes to the magazine is the heavier cover stock and inside paper (not to mention a liberal use of metallic ink). Gone is the dry, dutiful old feel of The New Republic, replaced with a look that is contemporary, engaging, and sometimes even fun.

The design is modern and digital-feeling, and the new logo is bold, built to work well across platforms large and small.

Barnett mixes this very contemporary design style with analog imagery, like the calligraphy for The Mall section opener, and many illustrations with a hand-drawn feel. He’s added white space, texture, and variety to the front of the book. There are nods to some of the things that Bloomberg Businessweek has done so well, most notably on a recent double-page chart devoted to Charles Schumer, with what seems like hundreds of little black and white headshots. The senior U.S. Senator from New York has never looked cooler, or more interesting.

Barnett explains the new design: “The New Republic has extremely rich, smart content, and our overall goal was to meet that with very smart design and art direction. We are just trying to have some fun, and do some great work when we can.”

The New Republic’s back section is highly formatted to deal with accelerated publishing deadlines (Barnett points out that this section closes before the rest of the magazine). The section begins with a splash page that features a beautiful full-page illustration of an ampersand, done with a handcrafted feel, in the way that The New York Times’s T magazine used to open its feature well each month with a variation of the distinctive black letter T. Many of the back-of-book pages are full text with no entry points; it’s a testimony to the strength and elegance of Barnett’s new design that even those pages look graceful and inviting.

The feature design is much more freeform and expansive, a place where graphic statements are being made. The almost all-white two-page spread opener of the cover story in the February 25 issue (the second of the redesign) features a giant two-word headline (“Original Sin”), a very short subhead and byline, and no image. Through pull quotes, sidebars, timelines, and photos, Barnett moves the reader through the features, even the very text-heavy ones, with expert precision.

There’s a new approach to the cover design, too. In the past The New Republic covers have been strongly illustration-based. But the first three issues of the new look featured a powerful, intimate portrait of Barack Obama by photographer Chris Buck, an all-white homage to The Beatles White Album LP (“The Republicans”), and a gorgeous, futuristic type treatment by typographic illustrator Sean Freeman.

Like Crooks at The Atlantic, Barnett has redesigned and reintroduced a colophon to The New Republic. The magazine’s classic sailing ship logo has been brought up to date and appears as an accent throughout the magazine. I sense a battle of the magazine colophons in the near future, or perhaps a new category in the publication design competitions.

The New Republic website redesign was done by Hard Candy Shell, with some input from Barnett (he calls their work “inspiring”). But moving forward, he’s got his hands on the entire brand: “The four of us in the art department really operate as an in-house design studio. We design the magazine, the tablet, maintain the look and design of the website, the signage and collateral for our events, etc.”

According to Barnett, the design of the iPad version of the magazine heavily influenced the print edition: “We kept asking, ‘How will this look on the tablet?’, and many of the design elements we cooked up were driven by the answer to that question.”

That’s something I found to be true when I was working at Reader’s Digest: the iPad app oftentimes informs the print edition, both in design and in the general way that the magazine is put together. The Atlantic and The New Republic have both made smart moves by hiring creative directors who not only have been able to completely overhaul their respective magazine’s visual identity, but who also understand the new nature of graphic branding, and who can extend those new visual identities across multiple platforms in an exciting way.

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The Media Weighs In On Yahoo's Work-From-Home Ban

mrondon — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:21:49 -0500

Bureaus, correspondents, freelancers--journalists and media-types have always worked remotely. Reporting on location is glamorized, exotic datelines accentuated. More than the flash that comes with it, remote work is a necessary part of journalism.

That's part of the reason Yahoo's pronouncement that it would end work-from-home arrangements drew skepticism from the journalism community in particular this week. While on-site reporting and working from home are different, the lines can blur when it comes to journalism.

Take Quartz, The Atlantic's new global business site. Editor-in-chief Kevin Delaney has 12 editorial staffers working from the group's home office in New York, but his team extends to Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Los Angeles, London, Paris, South Africa, Indonesia, India, Thailand and soon, Hong Kong. Many of those reporters operate out of home offices.

"It's a great advantage," he says. "We're able to be a global, 24/7 news organization serving an international readership."

Technology--instant messaging, Google Hangouts and shared documents are among the solutions Delaney has implemented--has allowed Quartz's staff to stay connected in spite of the disparate locales and time zones.

Yahoo is one of the most technologically advanced companies in the world though. They can figure out IMing. It's the loss of intra-office relationships that's their main concern, according to the company's internal notice leaked last Friday.

"Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings," the memo reads. "Being a Yahoo isn't just about your day-to-day job, it is about the interactions and experiences that are only possible in our offices."

Delaney admits the value of those "interactions and experiences" but believes they happen online, if slightly differently.

"There is a shared buzz around the office when you meet at the coffee machine," he says. "A lot of it carries over to IM though, particularly since we have a group chat that's exposed to everybody. There's something that could potentially concern just two people, but then winds up spilling out into the group chat and other people weigh in on it and follow up. The benefits of having a geographic spread and of having those serendipitous interactions where they live is a huge advantage and far outweighs the individual collisions in a single workplace."

Considering the nature of the job--highly digital and web-focused--and the institutional memory of remote work in journalism, media members might simply be better suited for the task than others.

Like Delaney, Macy Fecto, executive vice president of human resources and administration for business media publisher Access Intelligence, the parent company of Folio:, says that working from home is a plausible solution for journalists in today's business environment.

"Today's media lends itself [to remote work] better than ever," she says. "Because we work in a medium that is so digital, we're all used to that. Media has a slight edge over other industries, having people who can make the most of the various tools available that allow you to work from home and allow you to do so successfully."

Michael Rondon is an associate editor for FOLIO: Magazine. You can reach him at mrondon@accessintel.com and follow him on Twitter @Mike_Rondon.
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Are You a Cover Junkie?

Bill Mickey — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:49:05 -0500

Days before last week’s debut of The New Republic’s redesign, its new cover was posted and circulating around the web. The buzz was on, and people were tweeting and commenting on it before the magazine itself was even available for viewing. Today, every editor and art director thinks about creating a magazine cover that can go viral, that will work at multiple sizes on a wide variety of displays and platforms and create hype. Along with this, websites like Coverjunkie, NASCAPAS, and others are now providing a visual forum for magazine covers from all over the world to be displayed and distributed.

The Coverjunkie site just celebrated its second anniversary. It was launched in late 2010, the brainchild of Dutch art director Jaap Biemans [pictured below], who has done cover designs for the weekly Intermediair and the glossy, Vanity Fair-like Hollands Diep, before moving over to art direct Volkskrant Magazine, the weekly magazine supplement of a large Dutch newspaper (it’s basically The New York Times Magazine of the Netherlands). Biemans recognized early on that for many publications, the days of covers getting “heat” on the newsstand were a thing of the past. To date he’s posted over 11,500 covers, and Coverjunkie has become a daily must-destination for magazine art directors around the world.

Biemans interned at a design firm in NYC in the late 90s, and that New York experience has informed his design and editorial sensibilities. And while Coverjunkie has a definite global reach, he has a big soft spot for very American style-magazine cover design, as well as for the funky, gonzo-style designs of altweekly newspapers like The Village Voice.

What sets Coverjunkie apart from other cover sites is both the quantity of posts, and the fact that it’s well-organized and highly searchable. Biemans collects covers by publication, theme (9/11, split-run, premier issues), and art director, and he also publishes complete credit information, a rarity. His tastes are very egalitarian; there’s a healthy mix of consumer, mass market, enthusiast, trade, city and regional, and altweekly covers, with selections from Italy, England, Germany, Russian, and of course, The Netherlands. He also has a strong social media presence on Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook, which helps spread the Coverjunkie cover selects fast and far.

Coverjunkie is a one-person labor of love for Biemans, but it’s a project that is helping to redefine the essence of how magazines design and promote their covers. In a recent interview, Biemans gave the lowdown on how he puts the site together, and what makes a good Coverjunkie cover.

Why did you start Coverjunkie?

Biemans: I wanted to celebrate creativity in magazine design, to spread the love for ace cover design. And it was also a response to the “print is dead” statement, which I think is a lot of rubbish! I think a cover is more than just about selling itself, it’s also a reflection of our visual culture. On Coverjunkie you can see this reflection from all around the world, as well as from different decades.  How do you find the covers you post?  Biemans: I browse the good old newsstand and look online and on Twitter. Right now I get 10-15 covers a day by email, some good, some bad. The best thing about Coverjunkie is that some mags send me hard copies. I love that; it gives me a fab feeling.   
How do you select what goes on Coverjunkie?

Biemans: Posting everything would be impossible; I get too many covers sent to me. I post the most creative ones, the remarkable ones, the covers that stand out. The hardest part about Coverjunkie is editing the covers and then telling art directors that their covers are not creative enough, and that I can’t post them. I try to email everyone to explain. I hate disappointing people because I know they’re trying to create sweet stuff. But again, I have to be rigorous; when there are weak covers on the website it loses its strength.   
What makes a good magazine cover?

Biemans: It’s the creativity that counts. My motto on the site is “covers that smack you in the face or that you want to lick!” I think the ace cover contains news, a vibe, and creativity. Most of the covers have only two out of three of these ingredients. But when it carries three out of three you have an epic one. For many magazines, newsstand used to be the big indicator, but it's increasingly not that important, at least not in the U.S. I think a cover these days is more about making a statement instead of selling. It’s about creating a vibe that the reader likes (or maybe dislikes). A magazine cover is part of a brand, a very important part because it has a soul and it can give feeling and depth to a brand.

What magazines do you think consistently do the most interesting or memorable covers?
  Biemans: I definitely prefer magazines that use a different approach with each cover, who use their cover design to make a statement or to spark and surprise their readers. I like The New Yorker when they put newsy items on their covers. And I think The New York Times Magazine and New York rock it hard. Bloomberg Businessweek, they’re crazy, and what I like about them is that creative director Richard Turley and his team take charge and are very brave. I love all the altweeklies from the U.S., like SF Weekly and San Antonio Current! They don’t have big budgets but they create extraordinary stuff. There’s Spanish Metropoli, Texas Monthly, Vice, IL from Italy, Wired from the U.S., UK and Italy, Suddeutsche Zeitung Magazin from Germany….

What advice do you have for editors, art directors and others to create great magazine covers?  
Biemans: Three things: guts, guts, and guts. Mix that with talented designers with soul and a fab editor to create the best headlines. I’m a strong believer that creativity brings great pleasure to readers, whether it’s on an iPad, website, magazine or even cellphone. I don’t care as long as it’s well-designed and made with soul.

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A Look at the Design and Influences on Fairchild’s New M Cover

Bill Mickey — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 20:08:53 -0400

The first issue of M magazine, the luxury men’s magazine last seen in 1992 and being revived by Fairchild Fashion Media, came out on Monday with a very distinctive and unusual cover. It’s not the cover subject, Bradley Cooper (People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive of 2011), but the design, format, and photographic style that makes M very different from the usual newsstand fare.

According to M creative director Nancy Butkus, the cover design was influenced both by European men’s magazines like Port and Huck, as well as vintage issues of Fortune. “We had a stunning 1930s Fortune as our cover inspiration, and in some way we just updated what they were doing—they had borders on the cover and so do we, but ours are asymmetrical.”

Like Fortune, M’s cover was printed on a rich, thick, uncoated stock, with a felt finish, making it both a visual and tactile treat. I’m guessing, however, that M will not be mailed to its subscribers in heavy cardboard cases the way Fortune was until the early 1950s. The idea that upscale magazine consumers will respond positively to superior production values has been floating around for a while; it’s nice to see someone actually trying it out.

Although I would have loved to see M try to resurrect the very-80s expanded logo from the original magazine, they hired noted logo designer Jim Parkinson to draw a smart, modern, updated version. Parkinson has been creating and revising magazine and newspaper logos for years, but this is his best and most impressive work in some time (and that’s saying something!). It’s also very different for the Condé Nast/Fairchild magazines, most of which tend to have flat, relatively straight-forward type logos that aren’t nearly as “designed” as this one.

There’s a lot that’s “off” on this cover: the varied white bands on the right side and bottom, the quote running down the side, the use of the issue theme “Ambition” as the main headline. There’s a definite effort to make M feel stylish and a bit European, and for a luxury men’s magazine trying to distinguish itself from the crowd, that’s probably a smart move.

The photograph of Bradley Cooper, by Jason McDonald, is also very different from what appears on other American men’s magazines. It feels simple and authentic, almost non-stylish, and ridiculously friendly and intimate. Not to mention the power of those blue eyes, which are undoubtedly making members of both sexes weak in the knees.
Like everything else on the cover, it’s a smart way to establish a visual identity for a new magazine. The challenge for M will be in pursuing this idiosyncratic and slightly skewed cover approach every issue (it’s a quarterly), and not giving in to the demands for a more straight-forward, traditional design.
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George Lois Featured in Fast Company App

Bill Mickey — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:45:21 -0400

Fast Company’s annual design issue celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first cover that legendary art director George Lois created for Esquire magazine. This photograph, by noted photographer Platon, is available only in the iPad app version of Fast Company’s October 2012 issue, which is out today, September 12.

On the October 1962 cover of Esquire (which Lois is holding), he accurately predicted that boxer Sonny Liston would defeat Floyd Patterson in their upcoming heavyweight championship fight. That opinion at the time was decidedly in the minority, so much so that the publisher’s letter inside the magazine disavowed Lois’s prediction, saying “we’d prefer to believe that Liston can be stopped, and that Patterson is the one that can do it.” (Note: Liston knocked out Patterson in the fight’s first round). Says Lois, “The press wrote about the chutzpah of calling a fight on a magazine cover, and the issue was a sellout.”

Read more by George Lois on his first Esquire cover (and many others) here. The Fast Company October 2012 iPad app is available here. The October issue features Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann on the cover. (Photograph: Art Streiber, creative director: Florian Bachleda.)

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Quark Ups the Mobile Publishing Ante

Bill Mickey — Thu, 31 May 2012 15:07:06 -0400

Remember Quark? Not so long ago, when InDesign was just a rumor, it would have been unthinkable for a publisher to design and create a print magazine without QuarkXPress. Those who clung to PageMaker were scorned as being hopelessly behind the times. Even some at Adobe were privately worried that Quark’s hegemony could not be challenged.

Fast forward to the print/web/mobile/tablet/whatever era. InDesign rules in many publishers’ minds and budgets. Quark—both the company and its products—are disregarded, even disdained. “That’s just the way it is; some things will never change,” as the song goes.

Nothing is permanent, least of all in publishing technology. On Tuesday, Quark announced the acquisition of Mobile IQ, the UK-based developer responsible for PressRun. The latter is an app-creation environment very similar to Adobe DPS, WoodWing and Mag+, giving page designers the ability to add rich media and publish to the App Store or Google Play. (In fact, PressRun uses InDesign as one of its starting points. XML-based Content Management Systems are another. The most awkward moment of my interview with a Quark spokesperson followed a question on whether QuarkXPress and its App Studio feature would be part of the PressRun workflow. Quark has not announced any such plans, but did not rule it out.)

Where the story gets interesting involves the company’s attitude towards dedicated apps versus browser-based (but still app-like) publications. Mobile IQ has plenty of experience building custom apps—notably the BBC News app for iPhone. Both its custom and PressRun-based apps use a robust HTML5 presentation layer, and officials from both companies expressed the view that tablet publications will break out of the constraints of proprietary reader apps in the fairly near future.

Others share this view, of course. Many publishers would like to break free from Apple’s constraints, and still more are not convinced that the print page metaphor is the best model for an engaging mobile/tablet app. With that in mind, Quark is about to beta test a mobile publication—based in HTML5—that is purportedly more flexible than the page-like apps we’ve come to expect.

For now, consumer magazines may still want to stick with the more design-intensive world of InDesign page layout—in which Quark is now, perhaps ironically, a player. For b-to-b, however—an area where Quark has increased its focus—the situation is not as clear-cut. Mobile IQ has a strong play with STM and other structured publications, where managed content is a strong component. Business publishers may want to broaden their search for tablet publishing platforms that integrate well with a CMS. Neither Quark nor Adobe have an absolute lock in that respect.

Who knows? Publishing technology seems to follow another song lyric, “big wheels keep on turnin’.”

Former Seybold editor John Parsons is an independent publishing analyst, based in Seattle.

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Adobe’s Creative Cloud and Team Licensing: Let's Wait and See

Thu, 24 May 2012 16:06:54 -0400

In my May article, Creative Suite 6 and the Bottom Line, I described Adobe's new Creative Cloud (CC) approach-licensing its applications under a subscription model as an alternative to a traditional shrink-wrap license. Benefits include convenience, early access to incremental releases of Creative Suite (CS) applications, as well as access to newer applications not part of CS. What was discussed but not fully defined was the concept of "team licensing."

In a nutshell, CC team members have the same access to Adobe applications as individual CC subscribers, plus additional benefits, including more online storage, increased access to the Typekit Web font library, greater access to one-on-one technical support and troubleshooting, as well as mutual file sharing and collaboration. These benefits are described in the company's Creative Cloud Team Ready offer. However, as of this writing, many of the team program's particulars-contrasted with individual CC licenses-are still unclear.

Perhaps the most important aspect of CC team licensing is the ability to transfer a license or seat from one authorized team member to another. Whatever the other advanced features of CC team licenses may be, transferability of seats is a huge benefit for large organizations with a fluid freelance component.

That brings us to the issue of price. An individual CC subscription costs just under $50 per month, while a team subscription will cost just under $70 per month per person. When asked, Adobe spokespersons asserted that the additional benefits of a team subscription (e.g., collaboration features) would be worth the $20 difference. This is an untried assumption, to say the least, given that the full feature set for team subscribers has not been clearly articulated-much less tested for ROI.

When pressed, Adobe officials gave assurances that volume discounts would be part of CC team licensing for large enterprises-including publishers and agencies. Indeed, Creative Suite volume licensing is already a practice for traditional CS licenses. The unanswered question-still-is how large a team must be to quality for Creative Cloud team licensing discounts, and how steep those discounts will be.

The Team offering is scheduled for release this fall, so we expect to see more answers to these questions. Untl then, however, publishers and agency CFOs would be well advised to wait and see.
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The Magazine Medic

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:51:39 -0500

THE PATIENT: Where to Retire
AGE: 20 years
VITALS: Good
PROGNOSIS: Positive if patient is
willing to make changes.

Who doesn’t harbor dreams of a happy, active retirement in a (choose one): beach house/mountain retreat/golf community/island condo? Even the Magazine Medic, who truly loves his work, imagines one day trashing his toolkit and livin’ easy in a yet-to-be determined paradise.

But where? Cue Where to Retire, a magazine born on a bet that America’s aging workers were all busy fantasizing about cloudless climes elsewhere. It was a great idea.

Unfortunately, the magazine hasn’t changed enough over the years. The housing market, meanwhile, tanked. Household “wealth” is, for many, but a sad memory. And many retirees are staying put, albeit reluctantly.

Where to Retire hasn’t been entirely blind to these economic calamities. It’s responded by slightly reshuffling the edit mix. In particular, you’ll see lots more about vacations. The obvious thinking here: If you can’t afford that luxe kick-back pad when you exit the workforce, maybe there’s enough cash remaining for a few decent getaways.

What We Prescribe

• Number one, let’s immediately infuse some cred into this patient. Most of Where to Retire’s stories practically drool over the wonders of its featured towns. C’mon, tell your 200,000 readers that sometimes a place is not all it’s cracked up to be by its visitors bureau. That’s your obligation. Your readers will be the better for this honesty—and so too will your advertisers, who, even in a book like this, are banking on readers’ trust of the surrounding edit. We realize that risking the wrath of advertisers is a sacrilege in our business, but it’s often exactly what makes a magazine valuable to its prime asset, its readers.

• Ever heard of white space? Don’t go looking for any here, and don’t even enter if you’re the slightest bit claustrophobic. (On the other hand, some of the magazine’s infographics are excellent and just need to be aired out.) Covers: Where to Retire needs to produce some that don’t look nearly identical to the ones that just preceded it. Finally, while designers are completely revamping the magazine—the sooner the better, we say—don’t forget to send the logo to its much-deserved retirement. It emphasizes the word to, which is just plain wacky.

• Re-set navigation throughout, and recalibrate the pacing, aiming for less of a bargain-hunters’ vacation-catalog sensibility. Be far more transparent about what’s editorial and what’s advertorial. Assign feature photography that’s unblinkingly journalistic.

Medic’s Note

If the magazine can see its way clear to respecting readers more, its owners can one day retire with a clearer conscience.

A well-known reporter, writer, and editor—at Time Inc., Primedia, and other American publishing companies—Cable Neuhaus has frequently been called on to help create, repair, and run consumer and trade titles of various kinds.
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The Magazine Medic

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:19:14 -0500

THE PATIENT: Success
AGE: 114 years
VITALS: Improving
PROGNOSIS: Good

The kind of high-profile success that Success’ readers desperately desire has largely eluded the magazine itself over the course of its long life. The title has encountered at least two near-death experiences, yet fought back to publish another day. On that basis alone, some may award this book a medal for its mettle.

The most recent incarnation of the magazine, which emerged from ownership’s self-induced coma in 2008, shows promise. (Its claimed, unaudited, circulation is 200,000.) It also shows how challenging is the job of editors who run inspiration-and-advice guides.
How many ways can you persuade readers to pay for a magazine that exists almost solely for the purpose of encouraging their (sometimes unrealistic) ambitions?

What We Prescribe

• Who runs this book, really? An editorial director, an editor-in-chief, and an editor all get credit. Confusing, no?—and troubling as well. Another issue: Names of everyone in the ad sales and marketing departments are accompanied on the masthead by contact details. No such info for the edit staff. Together, these decisions suggest to the Magazine Medic that the book is driven by the business side. Nothing out of the ordinary there, but we see it as a prescription for a compromised editorial mission. At the very least, tell readers how to reach editors.

• Success does an admirable job of mixing it up—adding first-person tales of winning strategies, celebrity profiles, and sure-fire counsel to the editorial salad. The problem is execution. One area in particular that could stand improvement: Headlines and decks, which too often are ill-conceived. We need to know, immediately, who these story subjects are and why they matter.

• Cultivate franchise writers and columnists for Success. It’s comforting to open the book and notice familiar names, such as leadership guru John Maxwell and celeb physician Mehmet Oz, but haven’t we seen them elsewhere? As in everywhere? Far easier said than done, we know, but creating a stable of Successful columnists, such as biz books Fortune and Forbes have managed to do, is a clear signal to readers that we too have our in-house stars.

• Reduce the size of the Tech Tools section. These days, honestly, it’s damn near impossible to keep on top of these ever-changing toys on the daily gizmo blogs. Trying to recommend cool products in a long-lead monthly magazine is a dangerous gamble. Inevitably, as we have seen many times, magazine editors will anoint a gadget a good bet—only to discover weeks later that the industry and consumers have already said, “Uh, not so much.”

Prognosis

Especially in times of economic woe for so many Americans, this is a magazine worth nourishing back to health. Its sweet smell of success may return yet again.

A well-known reporter, writer, and editor—at Time Inc., Primedia and other American publishing companies—Cable Neuhaus has frequently been called on to help create, repair, and run consumer and trade titles of various kinds.
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TIME’s Cover Double Take

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:09:47 -0500

In an interesting move, TIME magazine will run the cover art from its December 12, 2011 issue again on its January 16, 2012 issue. The photo of Mitt Romney’s picture is the same in both treatments, but the headlines and positioning of the image covering the upcoming edition will change. See the covers, and read TIME managing editor Rick Stengel’s letter about the Iowa caucuses as well as the cover decision, below.

Why Iowa Matters (Even If It Shouldn’t)

Iowa is an outlier. The 122,000 people who showed up to vote in the state's caucuses represent less than a fifth of registered Iowa Republicans and exactly 0.09% of the U.S. electorate. In a representative democracy, Iowa is not very representative. It is 91% white and has few Latinos, not many immigrants and low unemployment. Iowa is also the only place in presidential politics where retail campaigning can still make a difference. Jimmy Carter showed this back in 1976, and Rick Santorum followed the same playbook this year.

But Iowa matters, in part because the candidates and media put so much emphasis on it. Probably too much. We would all be better off with a regional primary system, but that's not in the cards. So after more than a year of polls, debates, position papers and commercials, we finally have actual people voting, which is the fundamental right in a democracy. That's really why Iowa matters.

If this week's cover feels a little familiar, there's a good reason for that. In early December, we put Mitt Romney on the cover and asked, "Why Don't They Like Me?" — a question that has been at the heart of the GOP primary process. This week, in the wake of Romney's razor-thin win in Iowa, we've updated and revised the question, using the other half of the same portrait of Romney. The first cover got a lot of attention, not least from Governor Romney himself, who began annotating the cover for those who asked him to sign it. Now the voters in New Hampshire and beyond can answer the question for themselves.
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Face Up: 2011 Year in Review

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 09:59:17 -0500

2011 was a year of redesigns and relaunches, as magazine covers aimed to provoke (and as a result, to sell). Some efforts amounted in positive buzz and hiked newsstand numbers; others inspired seemingly unending rounds of media heckling (Newsweek’s July 4th cover, which featured a very Photoshopped image of the late Princess Diana, here’s lookin’ at you). Here, FOLIO: asks three of our 2011 FaceUp participants to weigh in on their favorite covers of the year.

TIME
October 17, 2011

Publisher: Time Inc.
Design Director: D.W. Pine
Managing Editor: Rick Stengel

“I can’t guess how many magazine covers have been designed in the past year (and I’m only counting the ones that didn’t end up in the AD’s drawer). 365 days, 12 months, 52 weeks—hundreds, thousands, maybe more. Weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly—you get the idea. Consequently, when I was asked to pick one favorite from the past year, I almost balked. After thinking about it for awhile, I realized that this year I could actually answer that question with conviction. Anyone who’s been in the publishing business for twenty plus years (particularly on the design side) will understand my answer.”

- Mick Schnepf, Art Director, Traditional Home Magazine

Complex
August/September 2011

Publishing Company: Complex Media
Editor-in-Chief: Noah Callahan-Bever
Art Director: Brent Rollins

“Hard to go wrong with a beautiful cover subject like Beyoncé, but the Complex design and photo team raise the bar for a celebrity cover by wrapping Beyoncé in a beautiful set of undulating typography. For this Style & Design cover story, Complex recruited photographer Thierry Le Gouès and artist Ebon Heath. Stunning photography, sensual typography, and killer styling come together in this iconic, arresting cover. A ‘Cover of the Day’ for SPD back in July—this cover is my Cover of the Year.”

-Josh Klenert, Society of Publication Designers, Vice President, Board of Directors

ESPN Magazine
May 16, 2011

Publisher: ESPN The Magazine LLC
Art Directors: Jason Lancaster
Editor-in-Chief: Gary Belsky (now former EIC)

“The gruesome image is stunning, I couldn’t stop looking at it. And I loved the decision to understate the size of the main cover line and put it in the yellow strip.”

- David Speranza, design director, Bicycling Magazine

Have a unique “cover” story? Contact associate editor Stefanie Botelho at sbotelho@red7media.com.
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State of the Art of the Newsstand

pubintern — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:28:42 -0500

If you're in the business of creating, recreating, designing or, God forbid, rescuing magazines on life support, you need to know what the state of the art is at this point.
You don't have to look very far. The dozen or so titles that define the latest details in packaging are on your newsstand.

Some sell well and some very well. And some very well for the past few decades. Examining them amounts to a master's degree in magazine crafts from how to construct a great cover to what's sexy with fashion photography and trendy typography thrown in.

1. Typography
If you want to look up-to-date these days try using very, very condensed sans-serif type. NEW BEAUTY ($9.95 at your newsstand) does it very well issue after issue. However, I can't guarantee that it won't look tired by next year. It's an old rule: the trendier you are, the faster you fall.

2. Info-graphics
Thanks to the legendary Nigel Holmes (graphics "that try to explain things"), TIME made info-graphics an integral part of the magazine since it was re-designed by the great Walter Bernard over 30 years ago. The graphics are more glorious and more frequent than ever. Seems sometimes that most stories come with a chart, a table, a map or a list.

3. Front of the Book
You can pretty much figure out how a magazine is trying to position itself by the importance it puts on the pages that precede the well.How one constructs the front of the book has become a science, from the length of the pieces, to the frequency of graphics and columnists. Esquire wants to attract young men with buying power and it does it in a skillful, literate way. No junky graphics, no quick fixes. And for the first 110 pages of the current issue.

4. Back of the Book
Bloomberg BusinessWeek gets high marks for everything from the reportage to the graphics. However, the only part that doesn't take itself too seriously and is habit-forming is the Etc. section. It's fast-moving and funny and makes no pretense at being useful. Check out "Great Moments in Nepotism", the only article in the issue that will stay with you.

5. Cutting Edge Design
Before there was Conde Nast's Wired, there was Wired. Wired only pays homage to itself and surprises all the time. Some of the graphics need a guide book but the overall package is always amazing.

6. Fashion Photography
Karl Lagerfeld's photographs of the latest couture in Harper's Bazaar are not 100 percent professional but they're straight-forward and totally up-to-date in a strange way.

7. The Sexiest Magazine
ESPN The Body Issue. Ordinary people who happen to be athletes who happen to be sexier than models and movie stars.

8. How to Talk to Women
Cosmopolitan's genius at knowing how to write edgy cover lines that barely avoid the magazine from being sold in a brown bag is still on a roll after 40 years. Although some buzz words have come and gone (last year it was "revenge"), there are still always three mentions of sex.

9. How To Talk to a Generation
Rolling Stone, like nobody else, has always known how to earmark everything that interests its audience from music to technology to politics. To say that it's influential is an understatement (it was one of the first magazines to run Candidate Obama on the cover) and its mix of cover lines is always a good barometer of current popular culture.

10. How to Look Useful
New York is the original service magazine. It's hit some high notes before but Adam Moss has redefined the state of the art. New York is packed with useful stuff presented with obsessive detail. It's the ultimate survival guide to the City and it's thicker and sells more copies than ever before.

11. How To Wow Them on the Newsstands
Vanity Fair picks big stars and big stories and world class gossip presented in elegant ways. The magazine's covers always stand out, the main headline is usually the name of the cover subject. I've counted the words on VF covers for months at a time and the average has consistently been 70, which you might also consider the state of the art.

12. How to Keep Them Coming
The New Yorker, since 1925. Newsstand copies of the magazine get a flap with the headlines on it. The result is one and a half covers: a full-bleed cartoon plus all the best magazine writing in America clearly listed separately.

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In a Dotcom World, Have Publishers Forgotten How to Negotiate Printer Contracts?

pubintern — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 10:08:51 -0400

Production departments have been among the areas most ravaged by lay-offs, and some observers say that loss of expertise leaves publishers at a disadvantage when negotiating printer contracts.
"When publishers got rid of the production manager, they got rid of people who understood contracts," publishing consultant Steve Frye tells me. "Now you have people negotiating printing contracts who are editors, art directors, publishers, who don't really know anything about what the terms should be. Many standard clauses that protected publishers from increases have been eliminated."
Frye cites paper pricing as an example. "Publishers used to buy specific paper, say Chocktaw 40 pound, and the printer would say, ‘OK, if you buy this, your price is $42.50/100 weight.' If Chocktaw raises rates, you'll have to pay more for paper. Fair enough."
But, Frye says, the trend over the last few years has many printers selling generic grades rather than specific brands. "If you've got a 40-pound paper groundwood, it might be Chocktaw or it might not," he says. "Publishers used to be very specific about whiteness, brightness, etc. As an industry we don't have that luxury anymore. Now printers say, ‘We will sell you 40-pound groundwood at $42.50' and when 40-pound groundwood goes up, prices go up. But when it goes down, prices are supposed to go down. It was easy to track when you were tied to specific brand or mill. But when you're tied to a grade, it's based on rumor."
But if that's the case, then you're at the wrong printer, according to one former publishing executive turned printer rep. "Printers should be able to disseminate information in a timely manner to customers," says the source.
Potential Trouble Spots

For Blood-Horse Publications, key contract expectations include a clear understanding of the contract timeline; any allowances with fixed pricing or payment terms; the insurance statement in case of fire, flooding, etc; and a paper pricing agreement, which covers whether price is set for a specific period of time of if the price will fluctuate.
"In our situation our contract is very straightforward and clear," says production director Lisa Coots. "If paper prices increase or decrease, we receive proper notification in writing before the new price goes into effect. We also look for bundle prices since we publish multiple publications. And, if an electronic edition is included with the contract, we request a pricing model for those services."
While Ogden Publications has seen some more leverage in recent years due to a softening demand on capacity and currently uses in-house talent to negotiate contracts, publisher Bryan Welch suggests getting a consultant to oversee contract development if the publisher doesn't have in-house expertise. "Contracts are highly complex, they change over time and it's clearly a process in which each side stands to gain or lose great advantages based on technicalities," he adds.
Potential trouble spots include handling charges and paper storage prices, according to Welch. "Sometimes that's below the radar and can hit a publisher hard. Whether a printer acquires or doesn't acquire paper for a publisher, either of those arrangements can be problematic depending on how the printer is handling surcharges and commissions. Sometimes those have different names in different contracts-you have to drill down the terminology when it comes to paper, handling, transportation and storage. All those sorts of things can become quite expensive if we don't negotiate aggressively."
Another area to watch is the printer's prerogative to hold on to printed matter in case of disputed invoice, says Welch. "Historically, printers have reserved the right to sit on a dated publication until the dispute is resolved," he adds. "That can destroy a publisher's business."
Require a clear outline of all charges and costs regarding co-palletization and co-mailing options, according to the publisher-turned-printer. "These are relatively new processes and often the charges for admin and freight costs are confusing," the source says. And in these days of rampant consolidation, there should be a clause giving the option of opting out of a contract if the printer is sold to another printer.
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