Design That Tells The Reader You Care

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, March 1, 2004

Byline: GEOFFREY C. LEWIS Editorial Director glewis@primediabusiness.com

This may be too obvious to mention, but it can't be stressed enough: Attractive, functional design is critical to the success of any magazine product - in print or online. There are very few publications whose prose is so compelling, its subscribers so dedicated, its competition so nonexistent, that it can succeed without excellent design. Unfortunately, there are many magazines whose editors and publishers seem to think they are the exceptions. This is particularly so in b-to-bs where art budgets were slashed in the past few years and original photos and illustration have been replaced by generic clip art and stock. (Many consumer books have cut corners too, relying on celebrity shots and substituting "real" people for paid models.)

It is not all about money, however. Some of the nicest looking magazines that cram our mailboxes at Folio: are produced on a veritable shoestring. Outstanding examples include Ziff Davis's CIO Insight, which uses elegant type treatments, a few excellent photographs, clever infographics and beautifully designed tables. The overall effect is to elevate the magazine: It can sit on a credenza next to the Harvard Business Review and command the tech executive's attention. Other magazines that do a lot with a little include The Daily Deal (now a weekly magazine) and Storage, a title from the online publishing upstart TechTarget. These crisp, clever and eye-catching designs tell the reader that they are important - that their business is important and that it is worth their valuable time to dive into this inviting magazine.

Too often, the visual message that readers get (and this applies to many small consumer magazines as well) is that we just don't care enough about you to provide a provocative, amusing or pleasant experience; we think you'll read us, no matter how fuzzy the pictures, how clashing the colors, how nonsensical the typography. Guess what? Just like you, your readers want to be seduced. And just like you, they won't spend a lot of time with an ugly, hard-to-navigate product when an attractive alternative is available.

For this issue of Folio:, we assembled a virtual colloquium on the state-of-the-art in magazine design. From women's magazines to b-to-bs and custom publishing, our experts give updates on the latest trends in layouts, choice of colors, typography and the other elements that go into making attention-getting magazine (and Web) pages. The package is preceded by our annual look at the best in cover design by Ina Saltz, a designer and graphics teacher who gives an annual presentation on cover design at the Stanford Publishing Course. As Leslie Jane Seymour, editor of Marie Claire, tells Ina: "The cover is everything!" But it's not all about newsstand. The cover is your best (maybe your only) shot at grabbing the reader, whether she is a harried mom, snatching up a magazine at the checkout or an engineer poring over a stack of mail trying to decide what to read and what to discard. In those few seconds, a great cover can make all the difference.

I would like to thank Ina and our panel of experts, including Roger Black, David Matt, Maryjane Fahey, Rolf Ebeling, Mario Garcia, Julie Lasky and JoAnne Persico for sharing their great insights into magazine design.