Defining a Successful Redesign

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Permalink Reply by David Willson on August 7, 2008 at 6:10pm

This is a very general question, open to a lot of interpretation. Here are some very general principles that I believe in, which unfortunately are not very much in evidence with a lot of magazine designs I see on the racks today:
• Don't follow pop design trends.
• Don't develop your own "signature" look and then trade on it for years, applying it to every title you do.
• Consider each section and column as a brand, subject only to the masthead brand and design them so they are "iconic" for what they represent. Then stick to that design long enough to be thoroughly "branded" into the minds of the reader.
• Unless its used in an illustration, clarity and linear flow beats graffitiesque design any day.
• Sweat the details profusely (even custom track the fonts for better readability)
• Given your readership, editorial and advertising strategy, figure out what print does very well for you, and also what makes it a weak medium. Then design a killer Web site to turn the weaknesses into advantages.

All of the above sounds pretty critical, but I generally think magazine design is much better than magazine content today. That's where most of the work is needed.

David Willson
Illustrator, cartoonist, designer, editor and writer

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Permalink Reply by Dan Trombetto on August 13, 2008 at 2:58pm

I guess one thing to consider is WHY you are doing the redesign to begin with. That should give you your answer. Do we redesign simply so we can have a pretty book? Nope! Ok, well, yes - us art folk DO want a nicer looking book than the version prior. But what does a better designed book do? It makes your publication more attractive aesthetically and easier to digest, which in turn should attract and hold onto more readers. And more readers is essential in attracting more attendees to your events and increasing ad sales, isn't it?

So as much as us artsy types might like to think that we are doing a redesign because we want to raise our book up to our own high artistic standards and create something we are proud of - I think a "successful redesign" is really more about the increased dollars than anything else.

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Permalink Reply by Adam Evans on September 12, 2008 at 11:54pm

We just launched a redesign at the a newspaper in Orlando. It may be similar in the basic problems. The paper down the street did a redesign 2 month before. We knew that we would have to explain that our redesign was not following their lead. That was to be done by a letter from the publisher in the redesign showing all the changes.

The things that made the most differences were actually the colors and the logo. Our new logo was square. Our old one was horizontal. All the house ads that had the old logo were no good any more so we convinced the publisher that the logo needed to have a horizontal version or be too small to run in the old ads. She reluctantly agreed. Since corporate sent out a redesign expert, it was a touch subject to go back after ward and step back to the logo being the same general shape as the last logo. Also when we send our logo out to be used in other pubs, the horizontal version seems to show up bigger than square or round logos. Also make sure your colors have good contrast so they will stand out well when printed small or reversed out. Don't use gray! Also, a logo should have a graphic or picture that can create a mental image that text doesn't create, like a NIKE swoosh. Also redesign the USP (Unique selling proposition) and bring the whole staff in on it. Then empliment it across the board.

Consider that all your forms, business cards, signatures under peoples emails, fax sheets, labels, brochures, stationary etc... need to be converted before the launch. vendors who use your logo should be given a copy the day of the launch in an email blast and a place should be given for media to easily download high res copies. One hard part of launching a redesign is that you have no graphics of covers, pages or sections. To describe how a section is different than the old way, you need a graphic of the new way...which has not been built yet. We did a prototype that we used for FPO, and then on the day we sent the pub to press we used the completed pix and dropped them in place of the FPO images.

The New colors were tested by the print company to see what it would look lke with the dot gain. We were pleased with the tests. One smart thing we did to avoid paying for a test run was to incorporate the colors into ads that ran before the launch.

In Editorial, the main changes were that readers wanted more concentrated short (non-jump) features. Our competition actually removed huge sections with out really asking the audience what they would do to improve the paper first. When the features their readers loved were gone, they were angry. That is a chance to capitalize on their mistake which we tried to do. One lady I know didn't like how our competitors new papers had too much ink and that she couldn't put it on the bottom of the bird cage anymore.

The best thing we did was have a tease and reveal campaign over a three week period for the launch. The tease was actually a cover of a present all wrapped up with a ribbon. The second week was a torn open corner showing part of the new logo. The reveal was the package almost all the way opened revealing the new look and actual front cover. (The cover can be seen on my portfolio page) The three tags were, "You spoke", "We Listened", and then "Redesigned with you in mind."
Adam Evans

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Permalink Reply by David Cardillo on September 23, 2008 at 1:52pm

3 words: Take Your Time.

Ideally, you'd polish (or better, get someone else to polish) your look before trying to reconfigure all your current pages to fit some new template.

That's just good resource management - asking your design and production staff to rework everything as they're working on it just burns people out. (they already have a full-time job.) Plus, your results aren't consistent throughout the work.

I imagine everyone reading this has been somewhere, working on their current issue, when a new design gets handed down for that same issue. Now all the questions come up (this type style was meant for 2 lines - what happens when it's 4? What's the kerning/justification spec for display copy vs. body? and, hey, there's no ital face in this font...) and there's little time to get these issues resolved.

Personally, I like having a rigid type spec, as it makes it easier for all of the people who eventually have to touch a document to keep the correct style. This is not something you want to go back and try fixing as you're going to press, as you find out your type doesn't fit any more.

You need to set out, before you hand it out, things like letter and word spacing, which faces of which fonts you want at which sizes. Which things are immutable, and which are meant to be amorphous, up to the whim of the designer (and are there limits)?

Hell, you have to make sure your IT staff has purchased enough licenses for all your new fonts and installed them on everyone's machine before you start circulating pages. ("Gee, it fit on my screen...")

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