Redesign: New Look for BusinessWorld

India's 'most read, most sold' business magazine gets a new sans serif masthead, additional sections and a semi-new inside design this month.

The January 14 issue of Businessworld (The Home Stretch cover) seems to be the result a redesign process that started about a year ago. The redesign is done inhouse and was overseen by Francesca Messina, former art director, New York Times and Senior Art Director, BusinessWeek. While the magazine now offers much more variety of content to read, the 'redesign issue' does not look very striking, in fact many spreads fail to deliver on the promise of 'cleaner, contemporary, more useful design'.

Some of the things that could have done with more attention:
1) Cover: Very poor readability. Black shadow used to make the cover lines stand out ends up making them look ugly.
2) Section names: Very random and very uninspiring. Some are two words (In Depth, In Vogue) and some are combos (OnPoint) but the strangest in this selection is the pretentious 'fianchetto' where 'i' is in the shape of chess pawn!
3) Slab serifs: The magazine introduces three new fonts- Miller, Dispatch and TraceGothic. Upon Googling I found that Dispatch was designed for heavy commercial lifting by Cyrus Highsmith. Little wonder than that layouts like the one shown below seem to be from the Industrial Age!

4) Gangly 'g's: The lowercase 'g' in the section header 'In Vogue' looks very ugly as the loop goes out of the lime-coloured box. Same is repeated in a few other places in where the loop of 'g' spills over to a different box.

And finally a bright side: The subsequent issue (already on stands) does not look so hastily put together at the first glance :)

Redesign: New Look for Reader's Digest

The only international magazine most of us in India grew up with has undergone a change.

The January issue of Reader's Digest will debut new cover with a bold new logo, updated fonts and column names. Also, the back-page illustration is gone and will be replaced by self-esteem theme ad from Dove. RD's with Dove also includes an online contest encouraging consumers to contribute and vote on stories of inspiring women, with the winner possibly appearing in a future Dove ad.

The Indian edition of RD will probably have the new logo by March 2008, as will all other international editions.

Redesign: Newsweek and BusinessWeek

Business Week and Newsweek are sporting new looks this week. Quotes from the people behind the redesign:
Jon Meacham, Editor, Newsweek:
“Some people in our business believe print should emulate the Internet, filling pages with short, Weblike bites of information. We disagree. There is a simple idea behind the changes in the issue of Newsweek you are holding: we are betting that you want to read more, not less.”

Business Week's Bruce Nussbaum:
“We’re introducing this type of open source aggregation into the new magazine, with blog items, quotes, and content from unusual, global sources surrounding stories, sometimes enhancing them, sometimes disagreeing with them. It’s a conversation, not a lecture."

In an interesting twist, Minoline invites magazine professionals to test "How ‘Redesigned’ Are These Recent Major Magazine Redesigns?

LaunchPAD: Tehelka Magazine, eMaxim

Tehekla Magazine: In his write up 'New Ship, Same Course', Tarun Tejpal discusses the transition of the Tehelka weekly tabloid to Tehelka magazine starting from this week’s issue.
Brief extract from his letter:
“When we set out to create the Tehelka weekly we chose the format of a tabloid. We felt Tehelka’s brand of proactive journalism would not fit well into the affectations of a magazine. … Even so it took us a long time to convince ourselves that we needed to find the shape of a magazine, and that only happened when we discovered a look that was not only different from all other weeklies but also capable of retaining our DNA unchanged."

Maxim India Ezine: Maxim India has launched what it claims to be the world’s first e-zine product – eMaxim writes Exchange4Media. The e-zine, which flips like a real book, has zoom in and zoom out facilities, has user based interfaces, television commercials, and videos all built in, comes as a free CD with the Maxim mega relaunch issue priced at Rs 150.

Redesign: TIME Magazine

I am watching out for my copy of TIME this week. With the March 26 issue the magazine has been redesigned in an attempt to attract new readers and keep the older ones.

The redesign was carried out by Pentagram and here are some layout and design changes to expect:

1) Smaller logo: The size of the cover logo has been reduced, a decision that allows for secondary cover lines and images to be run in a row of boxes above the logo.

2) Table of Contents, arranged on a horizontal axis, like a timeline (Spread shown here)

3) Four sections—Briefing, The Well, Life and Arts—sign-posted through the use of bold headlines.

4) The front of book ‘Notebook’ is renamed “Briefing,” and is designed to contain an easily ascertained roundup of the previous week’s events, short news items and the popular Milestones and Verbatim sections.

5) Web connection: Web touts have been embedded throughout the magazine that indicate related content at TIME.com.

6) A cleaner look courtesy of more white space, as well as larger headline text and big bold photographs.

7) A mix of writing styles, from quick-hit bullet points to more contemplative features, to a mix of text and visuals that tell a complete story.

For more background into TIME Redesign, visit the pentagram blog

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

Redesign: It is 'Outlook' this time!

We have one more redesigned publication in the Indian Magazine market.
Jan 2006 saw Better Photography of Infomedia India being redesigned by Synapse . This year has also seen a spate of redesigned publications from Malayalam Manorama Group: The Week, followed by Sportstar, which changed to a bigger tabloid format, aided by Mario Garcia, CEO of Garcia.Media (the 'chief architect' of the first major redesign of The Wall Street Journal in 77 years in 2002) and Hindu BusinessLine, which became 'Compact' in Feb 2006.

Is the redesigned Frontline out?

Anyway, Outlook has a new look from the April 17, 2006 issue. And it is not very inspiring :(
Will write more in detail later. Till then do keep me posted with your comments on the new look Outlook. And other redesigns...