Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bbn!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!oliveb!sun!chuq
From: chuq (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: comp.text.desktop
Subject: Publish! Page Makeover
Message-ID: <55037@sun.uucp>
Date: 1 Jun 88 19:13:19 GMT
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Well, I think it's time to start A Controversy, and I finally found
what I hope is an interesting one.

Publish! magazine has done a complete makeover of itself in the June
issue, and asked for comments from it's readers about whether or not
they improved things. I think it'd be an interesting discussion here as
well as a way of opening up a discussion of design concepts in general.

To get the ball rolling, here's a few observations that I've got based
on studying the magazine for a few hours.

In general, I think the makeover is an improvement. The magazine looks
more professional, more finished. It's opened up and more attractive.
It's not perfect.

One thing they've done that I really like is move away from what I've been 
calling a "baroque" look -- lots of italic or cursive text. A lot of DTP
publications use a lot of italics because of limited font selections and the
need for something distinctive. With the proliferation of good headline faces,
this isn't necessary any more, and Publish! has nicely designed this out of 
their magazine.

(As a completely unrelated comment, I've completely revamped
OtherRealms in somewhat similar ways, zapping all my use of italics and 
Zapf Chancery for a selection of Univers faces. I think every designer
goes through a baroque phase where they simply love Old English typefaces
and cursive scripts. And they wake up one morning and realize it looks
really rather silly, which it does....)

Things that work:

o The Table of Contents. It's NICE. Very nice, and a big improvement. I don't
	think it's perfect (The headers for the various sections, like
	"On the Cover" or "Features" would be better in a heavier face,
	and I'd probably Right Justify them so they stood out a little better
	from the article titles, but these are nits).
	
o The article titles. You now have a good, very strong identifier for the
	start of an article with the bleeding boxes. They've really opened
	up the start of articles and made the titles and blurbs stand out.
	Really nice.
	
o The new body face (ITC New Baskerville) is a good choice. I'm going to
	have to go back and take a second look at it (I've been considering
	Garamond, but then so is everyone else, since I can't seem to find
	a copy in stock....). Switching to justified text gives the 
	magazine a new dignity that I like.
	

Things that don't:

o The new logo. When I got my copy, the first thing I did was cringe, because
	even before I opened it up, I saw the logo on the cover and realized
	they'd done a makeover. The old one was really cutesy. The new one
	is very geometrical and angular. It's also very, very boring. 
	
	It's quite tall and narrow, and they added to the problems by putting
	it in a blackout box. The only word that really fits what they've
	done is "squished" because that's what it looks like. It looks,
	frankly, over-kerned and tight. 
	
	My general feeling on it is that they switched from a baroque logo
	to a hyper-modern one, and it doesn't fit them any better than
	the old one did. They'd be better off giving the logo a little
	more room to breathe and either widening the characters or lopping
	off a little of the height. Either way, the logo has serious 
	perspective problems. Whenever I look at it, I feel like I'm looking
	at it via a carnival mirror.
	
o white type. They're using LOTS of white type in black boxes. Too much.
	A really nasty example is on page 12, which is horrible. (It's also
	not repeated elsewhere, so perhaps they realized it was bad, but
	couldn't go fix it). I don't know about you, but while white type
	really draws your eye to it, it is also generallly unreadable. They
	could have had the same impact with colored or grey boxes (see P. 58
	and 59, for instance) without the glaring contrasts. Occasionally
	is okay for impact, but they go way overboard. (again, as a side 
	comment, I've designed all the white type out of the next OtherRealms
	for many of the same reasons, long before I saw this issue).
	
o The masthead. Page 4. The type is way too small. It's completely 
	unreadable to use that type with this printing process on this
	paper. Total botch. 
	
o Small Caps. They should either use a lighter face or get rid or the
	small caps. Putting them together makes the text unreadable and
	it attracts too much attention. Compare, for instance, the
	headlines on page 25 with the "DTP: Making it in Japan" headline on
	page 31.
	
o Too many faces. If you look at pages 32-33, you see lots and lots of
	headlines and a bunch of different design concepts. This honestly
	looks like the pages where they were prototyping stuff. They need
	to decide on a single style for stuff and go with it. too noisy.
	
o Too heavy faces. In many cases, they use a face that is too heavy for
	the size they are printing. See page 35: "The latest books..." 
	as a practical example. It's so heavy the openings in the letters
	have basically gone away, and the text looks almost characaturish.
	The size is right, but a lighter face would improve readability
	significantly without reducing the impact significantly. They're
	trying for a lot of black and a lot of contrast on the pages,
	and simply are going too far. 
	
In balance, it's better. But there are some things I consider basic flaws
that I'm surprised they let get through. 

What do you folks think?

chuq

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