The New Yorker: Slow Evolution, Intelligent Design

Thanks to FishFriend&#153 TMFTML, I found this fascinating post at Design Observer, which goes back in time to the early New Yorker and finds it perfectly preserved in a timeless,classic format. Artist-cum-blogger Michael Bierut writes a long encomium to the magazine’s design and history and overall aesthetic (someone clearly loves their Complete New Yorker, clunky CD-ROMs or not); I’ve taken the liberty of reprinting his cover of choice (Charles E. Martin, 1946) because it’s so amazing to see the familiar magazine, priced at 15&cent (now, at $4.99, it often presents the difficult choice between a good read and a tub of Ben & Jerry’s).

Unschooled as I am in the minutiae of design (I leave that to my able colleagues at UnBeige), it was cool to read how finely-tuned the changes had been over the years. During a time when the redesign is king, it’s interesting to read about a redesign engineered so as not to attract notice. Also, props for this hed: “Good Font, Shame About The Reporting.” Poor NYT, everyone’s always watching. Lonely at the top (yes, yes, Jay Rosen, but see this).

Another New Yorker design note: they must have read Julie Bosman‘s article on the comic-book Zeitgeist — Tad Friend‘s “Letter From California” has a great noir-ish comic-book panel spread across the top half of two pages (though come on, New Yorker, credit your illustrators! No signature on the illo, and no mention of the artist on the contributor page).

In Praise of Slow Design [Design Observer via TMFTML]

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