Designing the 'Macazine.'

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, June, 1990

New York City-The Macintosh is transfiguring not only the way magazines are made, but how they look as well, a panel of Macwielding art directors told a recent gathering on the "Macazine" at the Society of Publication Designers.

Not only does the Mac supply speed and the ability to experiment with multiple versions of a single layout, it alters the design vocabulary: "It changes the kinds of tricks you go to first, said Michael Grossman, art director of Entertainment Weekly.

Wraparound type is a case in point. Once a laborious matter of cutting and repasting type by hand, rewrapping now calls for only a few mouse clicks. Text automatically reflows.

The Mac has also provided easy access to color type, knockout type, manipulated type, an ever-increasing bouquet of tints and background patterns behind type.

Mac work smudges the hard lines that traditionally separated editors and artists, bringing type and images together in a more "integral design"-and a more flexible one, according to Ronda Rubinstein, art director of Smart. When it's easy to resize art or type, or change leading, to make copy fit, editors and artists may collaborate more closely on the final page.

Perhaps best of all from the creative standpoint, said Grossman, the nonlinearity of the Mac lets designers "jam." Like jazz musicians, they can improvise on themes, saving a version, then doing it in different typefaces or colors, or even passing it on to another designer for collaboration.