Armin at the blog Brand New deconstructs the new design overhaul of BusinessWeek magazine:
The logo, in this case, is not the most important aspect of the redesign — although the 180-degree shift from serif to sans serif acts as the perfect statement to signify change, shoving the old, stodgy logo out of the way for a new, bold, no bullsh*t logo in a surprisingly well kerned sans serif typeface that looks to be a customized version of, my best guess at the moment, Univers, but I wouldn't bet my mortgage on it. It's inside that the magazine feels more relevant with a clean design and consistent typographic treatments that sway you from beginning to end. Simple size shifts from front of the book to feature stories to back of the book are enough indicators that you are changing sections without resorting to extra fancy opening spreads for the feature stories. I mention this in light of, and as a personal response to, Wired magazine's opposite approach where each section is all fireworks all the time and the back of the book stories are usually painfully disjointed from the feature stories. But I digress. With its redesign, BusinessWeek has poised itself to play in the same field, in terms of shelf presence as Time, something it couldn't quite accomplish before. In terms of content, BusinessWeek is going to great lengths in convincing us that this is the best magazine everclaims it's "a new kind of print medium that will be the model for magazines to copy in the years ahead." While this may be a happy exaggeration, I am pleased to agree that this redesign feels like a great step forward for BusinessWeek, and I'm almost certain that, when the next redesign happens, I will remember what it's previous incarnation felt and looked like.
There is much more at Brand New, with visuals for comparison.
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