The Big Decision
You have finally come to grips with the fact that your magazine needs an overhaul and a redesign is eminent. You have done the market research and received everyone’s buy-in on both the editorial staff and the design team. Great. Now what? This is often decision-making time for many publications. This is the point where the team needs to decide whether they want to handle the redesign in-house or contact an outside contractor to take on the job. Ok… Now, how do you decide which is the right redesign process for you, your team and your publication? First and foremost, ask yourself: Does your team have the talent and time to pull this off? It’s a no-brainer but it has to be asked. Do you feel like your in-house creative team has the knowledge, talent and time to pull off a successful redesign at the quality level you expect? If the answer is yes, continue reading. If the answer is no (or you had to think about it way too long), go directly to the Outside Contractor section.

Staying In-House
Starting an in-house redesign allows the team an obvious high level of control over the entire process. Since it’s an in-house project, it can be controlled like an in-house project. The redesign can happen immediately and everyone on the team is there through every step of the process. Critiques can happen often and the redesign can be massaged on a regular basis as needed to get it to where it needs to be.
A big decision for the in-house staff is deciding on how to deal with the ongoing publication as the redesign is being worked on simultaneously. Time and manpower are crucial. Can your team be divided into two divisions to deal with both the current issue and the redesign? Or will your budget allow for freelancers to be hired to deal with the daily magazine production and open up your design team to concentrate on the redesign. A realistic schedule for the redesign launch is paramount to help make this decision so that you don’t stretch your team too thin, or go over budget with freelance.

One of the design hurdles with the in-house redesign is the team’s intimacy with the prior magazine design. The creative team will have to make a conscious decision to step away from what was and move forward with what will be. For some teams this is easy, for others it’s more difficult. Some creative teams are too close to the old design that it is very hard for them to step away. Make this decision early because the last thing you want is to get midway through a redesign and realize your team is just too close to it and your goals for the process aren’t being met.

The Good:
-Unlimited control and direct team involvement
-The team working on the redesign is intimate with the publication
-The in-house staff dictates the timeframe/schedule

The Bad:
-Time and manpower limitations due to the ongoing magazine work
-The team working on the redesign is intimate with the publication
-Possible lack of knowledge and experience on magazine redesigns

Outside Contractor
There are many different firms that specialize in magazine redesign and each has a different process and outlook. One of the great things about working with an outside contractor is that you get to choose who you feel is the best fit for you, your team and your budget. Working with an outside contractor can remove all of the pressure that comes with the redesign process from your team and allows them to focus solely on the ongoing magazine production until the redesign is ready to be implemented. Specialized contractors often bring a fresh perspective and tested processes into the fold. Their experience in the redesign area can often streamline the redesign and help with the organization of all aspects of the process. Obviously, working with a contractor isn’t as hands-on as an in-house project, however this issue can be easily avoided as long as the communication lines are always open. A quality line of communication between your team and the contractor can mean the success or failure of the redesign… as with most projects communication is of utmost importance.

The Good:
-Specialized in magazine redesign – it’s what they do
-Removes pressure from the in-house team
-Bring a fresh outlook and tested processes to the project
-Good communication can lead to a successful redesign

The Bad:
-More hands-off than the in-house process
-Non-communication can lead to goals not being met
-Often slightly higher cost than the in-house solution

Choosing
Choosing between an outside contractor and an in-house redesign can be difficult. Even with the general overview above, deciding which direction to take on the process isn’t always cut and dry. The key is to think through everything clearly, state your goals and make a decision based on your magazine, team, schedule and budget. Good luck.

Speed.

One of the most important aspects a designer can have in their repertoire is speed. Speed and passion are traits that often go hand in hand and can be the cause and effect of how a project progresses. In my experience, if you can jump on a project right away, you keep your enthusiasm up about the job which in turn keeps your passion high and creative juices flowing. This fact alone can increase the quality of your work and help you meet deadlines. This is only one of many reasons speed can play an important role in a design process.

Why Fast?

Often, if you spend too much time at the beginning thinking it through and analyzing every detail, you can lose the passion that you initially had. This can make the job drag out and then take longer for the designer to get it where it needs to be creatively. Every little thing a designer does is based on some kind of timeline or schedule, whether internal or external. This fact is especially true when dealing with a time-sensitive subject like magazine design. Unfortunately, those schedules are a nasty reality that we will always have to deal with—so the faster we work, the less those deadlines can impact our design. Another benefit of speed is that it can increase quality and creativity down the road—the more ideas a designer can come up with quickly (see my last article on Brainstorming) the faster you can validate or negate the idea and create again. This allows you to come up with the best ideas and solutions quickly and allow yourself more time for the detail oriented, time consuming part of production. The faster you work, the more time you have on the project. The more time you have on a project translates to higher quality work, deadlines that are always met and happy clientele.

The Effect

Working fast forces designers to compress their own design process into a shorter time frame and push them into thinking quicker on their feet. The speed drives the designer to identify and solve design problems immediately. These traits can save you time later in the design process. Also, impressing the need to work quickly on younger designers can also increase the effectiveness and speed of other talents like focus, creative problem solving and client-facing communication skills.

Speed vs. Accuracy

The benefits of speed are obvious (as chronicled above), but I would be remiss if I also didn’t at least touch upon the possible downside and how a designer can deal. If a designer works faster than he or she is comfortable with or capable of, it can reduce the level of attention to detail and sometimes general accuracy. To work quickly and effectively, a designer needs to have a high level of understanding regarding the project and have all the information organized and accessible. This knowledge and organization of information will allow the designer to work quickly while having everything they need to know at their fingertips.

Extended deadlines and long, drawn-out schedules are not something we see a lot in our industry. Everyone wants it done yesterday—and that will not change anytime soon. Speed is integral to the design process and something that we can’t really do without. Designers that can create both quickly and accurately will always have a high value in today’s fast-paced world.

A Perfect Storm.
A typical brainstorming session in our shop usually involves our project creative brief, piles of magazines, high levels of caffeine and sketches doodled everywhere.

The fact is, the faster you come up with ideas, the more time you have to refine them, implement them or (in most cases) nix them all together and come up with better ones. That is exactly why nothing will ever beat a solid brainstorm to kickoff a magazine redesign.

Magazines are complex and a redesign has to address many (if not all) of its parts. Brainstorming and sketching are integral parts of this process. A brainstorming session allows for the rapid development of ideas, both verbally and visually, that often diagnose, address and solve problems we will come across in the redesign quickly, and with multiple solutions.

A good brainstorming process can be relatively simple: set the problem, discuss the parameters and establish an open-minded environment for everyone to create in. This step in the creative process is without a doubt the easiest way to clear out all of the typical solutions and average ideas, feed off each other, and help get to the big idea(s) that everyone is striving for. In a good session, the more heads in the room, the more ideas we will develop. And the more ideas, the more possibilities we have to do something truly innovative.

Creatives are by nature a visual group and they often react to visual things first. This is exactly why sketching is an important part of the brainstorming session. If someone can get their idea down on paper, the group can often react quicker than through verbal description.

When this process is applied to magazine redesign, it means addressing subjects like the history of the magazine, audience, production cycle, and content (or lack thereof), grid layout, fonts, general type size, folio, and navigation, Each of these items pose a different challenge, unique to that specific redesign project. All should be addressed, both verbally and visually to provide the most viable solutions.

In a brainstorm, quality can come from quantity. Sometimes the sheer number of ideas, solutions and sketches that are produced in one session can be staggering. And what can be even more shocking are the numerous ideas that are scrapped almost as soon as they are created. But again, that is the goal. Get rid of the average and drive towards the unique solution.

Often, the incredible part of a brainstorming session is where the good ideas actually come from. It usually happens in a myriad of ways. Creatives feed off one another, and the ideas can come from everywhere. It may be a small squiggle on the board that has been added to by three different people, or it could also come from a long conversation. Regardless of how they are conceived, these ideas and solutions drive the session and will eventually lay the foundation for the success of the final project.

Like the brainstorming session mentioned above, exercises that use hive-like problem solving and a thorough creative process are what can really set you apart from other firms and provide your clients with a unique, targeted solution for their publication and readers.