Courtesy of Time Magazine
The new Time redesign drops this week, with a cover that still looks like the old cover — same font on the title, same thick red border (but thicker, and sans thin black outline). The website address has moved from top to bottom, they've added a banner up top (though not sure if that's new) and on the whole it looks pretty similar, but we won't be able to assess until we can flip through a fresh n' glossy new issue. What's bolder is the covers subject — "How The Right Went Wrong" — with an image of a weeping Ronald Reagan, whom we sometimes still can't believe became such an icon after starring in a series of films with a monkey named Bonzo. It just goes to show that there's hope for Rob Schneider yet.
Time editor Rick Stengel explains in his editor's letter about his own monkeying around...with Time's classic look, content and structure. Stengel says that they looked at issues of Time going back to 1926 to find something that took Time's DNA and "adapted it to the 21st century" in a way that felt both "new and classic," which looks more classic than new but again, we've not seen the print version. And from all accounts, the overall effect is impressive (this from what we've heard personally but also from Joe Hagan's recent story in New York). It would be: Time hired Luke Hayman, the former New York design director who revamped the mag's look, winning them last year's Ellie for his trouble (Hayman's team at Pentagram worked with Time art director Arthur Hochstein and deputy art directors,Cynthia Hoffman and D.W. Pine). Structural changes include the new "Briefing" section front of the book, a section called "Downtime" plus new departments like "food, history and the Power of One" (we have no clue what that means).
Also new: The tear on Regan's face, photoshopped in as indicated on the Table of Contents (though according to Jeff Bercovici at Radar they don't say "photoshopped" they credit "Tear by Tim O'Brien"). Cover photoshoppery is nothing new to magazines (insert obvious "especially not to Time" reference here), but kicking off the redesign with such a charged image is sure to fan a few flames (as Bercovici notes). That's probably no accident — it's a splashy relaunch, after all, and attention must be paid — but the real question, of course, is whether the new look will be enough to propel that vaunted Time DNA back up to the pride of place it once enjoyed. Hey, if Bonzo could do it, why not them?
How The Right Went Wrong [Time]
Time Gets Crafty With Weepy Reagan Cover [Radar]
