When BusinessWeek decided to freshen up its look, the magazine’s editors decided to go in an unusual direction. Instead of hiring a traditional design firm, they recruited Modernista!, a Boston-based advertising agency that had previously worked on the redesign on IN magazine. A team from the company worked in concert with BW‘s editorial staff, including editor-in-chief Stephen Adler and art director Andrew Horton, to remake the book for the Internet age. Bruce Crocker, design director at the firm, discussed the process his team went through, the end result, and the difficult task of “brand soul searching.”
Modernista is known primarily as an advertising agency. How did you end up working on the BusinessWeek redesign?
Also on Mediabistro
Modernista was approached by BusinessWeek for the magazine redesign as a result of the relationship we had developed with them during our design work on IN magazine, a quarterly supplement that focuses on business innovation which we helped name. We were awarded that project because of the depth of Modernista’s design and strategic capabilities. While Modernista may be known primarily as an advertising agency, we have always had a comprehensive design component in our work. In fact, our creative teams are built with triads of writers, art directors, and designers who work very closely with our strategic planners.
Who was on the redesign team from both Modernista! and BusinessWeek? How closely did the two groups work together? What was the process?
For the BusinessWeek redesign, the core design team at Modernista consisted of executive creative director, Gary Koepke; myself as design director; senior designer, Katie Andresen, who incidentally did much of the heavy lifting; and designer, Michael Seitz. Additionally, head of planning, Gareth Kay and account director, Kirsten Hano rounded out the team. On the BusinessWeek side, editor-in-chief, Steven Adler, and the magazine’s art director, Andrew Horton, were our contacts and collaborators.
Regarding the process, we approached the assignment the same proprietary way we approach all work at Modernista, which generally consists of brand soul searching, numerous research and audit exercises, strategic definition and positioning, and extensive creative/design explorations and testing. The working relationship between Modernista and BusinessWeek was relatively transparent. The fact that we were in Boston and BusinessWeek was in New York needed to be marginalized by regular on-site, face-to-face meetings at both locations. We were very sensitive to the distance factor and may have even over-compensated by having so many meetings. However, in practice, this approach not only became the best way to keep our communications tight, but also helped us stay on top of the rigorous schedule the assignment demanded. We also did a lot of electronic file sharing.
What were the challenges of redesigning a magazine to function in the digital world? How did you overcome them? What advice would you offer to others hoping to overhaul other magazines?
The balance and dynamics between print and digital are constantly shifting and being debated. We needed to keep our eye on a few key factors. Specifically, we needed to thoroughly understand how the magazine’s readers interact and absorb information through different media. Although this was a print assignment, it was critical that the reader experience be considered in conjunction with its digital counterpart. Simply put, print and digital are interrelated but engaged differently, so in a way, we needed to have a vision and strategy for both. The diverse resources that fall under the single Modernista roof gave us the ability to think three-dimensionally about the problem and ultimately provide a strategy that was logical and actionable.
| The content flow needs to stand the test of time, as does the overall look and feel of what we’ve created. |
The redesign includes a section that summarizes related articles from other publications. In the age of Internet aggregators such as Drudge and Google News, do you think more publications will follow this trend in their print editions? What other magazines or magazine genres lend themselves to this sort of cross-pollination?
Editorial aggregation is nothing new. In fact, in the early nineties, Modernista founder Gary Koepke, along with editor Michael Schultze, created a Dunn and Bradstreet print publication called World Tour in which all of its content was second source. It will be interesting to see how different media types will converge and how this type of information will be restructured and tailored to each particular reader experience. This is partly what we faced during the BusinessWeek redesign. In terms of specific genres of aggregated content that lend themselves to cross-pollination, for me it’s completely open-ended.
What’s your ultimate dream for the new BusinessWeek?
BusinessWeek has a very large and loyal subscription base, so part of our redesign objective was to create a publication that was even more relevant and useful as a tool to that base. Strengthening reader loyalty and increasing subscriptions is something that was very important. Another one of our key objectives was to provide a design that would help secure additional revenue from advertisers. If ad revenues increase over time, we’ll know that we’ve provided good value. But that’s not enough. The content flow, which we were a part of mapping out, needs to stand the test of time, as does the overall look and feel of what we’ve created. Additionally, we’d like to see other BusinessWeek products and services benefit from our contributions. If over the next six months to a year things are still intact, still relevant, and still functioning smoothly, we’ll feel good.
What’s next for you? Are you doing any more magazine redesigns in the future?
Modernista is constantly engaged in pursuing a number of diverse opportunities in areas that go beyond what is typically framed within an advertising agency. The recent U2 video that Gary Koepke directed is a great example how our curiosity has been realized. That’s exciting for us. So it could be just about anything that asks for a new point of view.
Four tips for successfully redesigning a magazine
1) Do your research.
Modernista and BusinessWeek spent “Many months asking several thousands of people, readers and nonreaders questions about what they want and expect” from the magazine, Crocker says.
2) Set goals.
“Strengthening reader loyalty and increasing subscriptions is something very important,” Crocker says and the redesign focused on helping achieve these goals.
3) Don’t be afraid to aggregate content from other sources.
“BusinessWeek shares ideas that they have found insightful even if they weren’t invented within the publication,” says Crocker.
4) Shake up the norm.
New sections will include The Business Week, News, In Depth, What’s Next, Personal Business, and Opinion. Columnists and a weekly feature will reside in a new back-of-book section.
Noah Davis is mediabistro.com’s associate editor. He can be reached at Noah AT mediabistro DOT com.
Topics:
Mediabistro Archive