Redesign: Wired sports a New Look

With its February 2007 issue Wired magazine has a new look, starting with a tweaked logo/masthead. According to a post on Wired news, ‘the redesign is based on a simple premise: expand the use of provocative photography and inventive illustration while maintaining the tradition of innovative typography and design pioneered by John Plunkett in 1993’.

Here are few of the changes you can expect when you pick up the latest issue of Wired:

New Masthead: Refer to the new cover (large image on top)and older cover (small image to the right)
New Typography: Four new families of type designed by Hoefler & Frere-Jones
Thicker, less glossy paper: Makes the photography stand out and is easier to read (finally!)
Reworked Front of the Book: Start, Posts, and Play get a makeover, Rants+Raves is now ‘Chat’.

However, one feature I am waiting to see is section content sequence indicator (to indicate how many pieces/articles are there in each section and where the readers is in that sequence). I got this info from the website of designer andy rutledge, who calles it ‘a Web-style mnemonic applied to print’

The new look is already getting many rants and a few raves. You can view reader reactions here