People's Gradual Lift

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

When Martha Nelson took over as managing editor of People a year and a half ago, her first mission was to give the magazine a design makeover. But rather than doing it in one issue and blowing the trumpet to the press, she and Rena Migiaccio, the magazine's creative director, decided to go the subtle route. "You don't want to do it abruptly and create a sense of disaffection and alienation," she says. "It's too surprising and signals that something is wrong."

Instead, the team changed the design in different stages - section by section, week by week - over the course of three months. First they changed the body type and headlines. Then they redesigned the front of the book. Next they created a new TOC. "When I was at InStyle, we did this and no one even noticed that the design had changed," Nelson says.

Like a good haircut or subtle eye lift, People's new design offers freshness without the shock of the new. Migiaccio says she tried for a cleaner, sharper and more flexible design, which helps the editors react more quickly to the news. This flexibility gives them a competitive advantage in a celebrity journalism market that is becoming increasingly crowded with publications such as US, In Touch and the new Star. "The new design helps us in the market," says Nelson "But the impetus was a creative one."