Boston Pops: A Conversation with Patrick Mitchell

PM: City and regional magazines are an incestuous bunch. There are the truly great ones (Texas Monthly, New York), and then there are the rest. When one has success at something, the others quickly follow. And because we're all doing a lot of the same stories, the overall design (Boston included) can tend to be pretty homogenous. There's definitely a "city magazine" look.

Our FOBs were called "City Style" and "City Journal" which at some point were probably unique, but aren't anymore, and don't really convey much of a Boston-specific personality. So we came up with 3 FOBS that cover the wide range of topics that city and regionals cover. The first, "Forecast," is a calendar- and event-driven section. It's followed by "Connoisseur" where we do fashion, shopping, food, travel, culture, and design. The third FOB is "Examiner," which is our news section.

PM: I do believe in simplicity, but I also believe that each job is unique. The new design of Boston is meant to reflect the city's rich history, its collective IQ, and its European roots. It didn't hurt that HBO's John Adams miniseries came out right as I was working on it. When you're researching Boston's publishing history, you have to go back to the 1700s -- which is how we arrived at Caslon. Caslon was exported to the Colonies by the British, and it's in the DNA of our country. The Declaration of Independence -- the publicly-circulated version -- was printed in Caslon. As I researched publications of the era (especially Poor Richard's Almanac), this sense of "typishness" kept recurring, and it was so labored and overdone -- and I really liked it. We needed a classic serif font that had plenty of ligatures, alternates, and a swash italic. We worked with David Berlow at Boston's Font Bureau to tweak Matthew Carter's Big Caslon, which is our primary display type. In addition, they were kind enough to share their as-yet-unreleased Williams Caslon Text for our body copy. We're also using Archer and Knockout (Hoefler & Frere Jones), and United (House Industries). It's a big-ass font stew.

PM: Folios have become a little detail that I sweat WAY too much. It's a personal challenge for me to never do two the same way. As for Boston, there was a practical reason for the two folios. As you've noted, one of our inherent obstacles is the number of fractional ads we have to deal with. They're rampant in most city magazines. For those pages, our stacked folio wouldn't work, so rather than scrap it all together, we just came up with an alternative for those pages. It's funny how something as small as a folio can affect the overall look and feel. I was lucky that I could convince everyone that forcing the magazine's URL into the folio was silly -- it was nice to get it out of there. I think our slightly over-wrought folio is unique and appropriately fussy for this magazine.

 

PM: 'Ugh' is right. But it's a reality we had to deal with. As our owner says, they are the 'bread and butter' of city magazines. We tried to address them head on. They used to be great for eating up text in long stories, but our stories have gotten much shorter. So, for example, we created content called "The Skinny" (get it?), especially for those spaces.

PM: Years ago I bought an issue of McSweeney's that was several 'booklets' bound into one big book, held together by a fat rubber band. I've kept it for years, waiting for an opportunity to do something like it. As we planned the redesign, it occurred to me that a city magazine really has to be several magazines in one: news magazine, fashion magazine, calendar, restaurant guide, shopping guide, human interest magazine, and newspaper. We created the new FOBs with that in mind -- that they were each a magazine within a magazine. And the Examiner is our newspaper. We even print a newsprint color behind the pages -- the ads, too.

PM: In this economy, it is a real budget challenge to bring in outside photographers. But there are very talented photographers here. They're just not completely fluent in magazine photography, which, as you know, is a unique pursuit. For a photographer to survive in Boston, they have to really be jacks-of-all-trades: still life, portrait, landscape, etc. But it's hard to be really great at one discipline if you have to shoot them all. So it requires more direction and input on our end to get the results we need. But so far, so good. That said, we have had several NYC photographers shoot for us since I've been here. If they like what you're doing, they don't mind making the extra effort to get here.

PM: James Burnett, the editor, and I worked very closely together on the redesign. He had plenty of influence on the look and feel, and I contributed a bunch to the editorial. We made a good team. We really gutted the old magazine to create something completely new, to try and break free from the city-magazine routine.

PM: I did not know there were other colors available.

PM: James had been thinking about this for a long time -- before I even got here. So he was ready. And we changed everything. I'd say content-wise, about 15-20 percent of the old stuff still exists.

PM: I don't have a plan. It's hard not to look at New York magazine's covers and just say, 'let's do that!' But they have a distinct advantage in being a weekly. With 50 issues a year, they can experiment more than you can with a monthly. What that means for our covers, I don't know. I'm taking them one at a time.

PM: You know me, dude. I'm already working on the next redesign! But seriously, now that everything's in place, I'll start noodling with it. Who knows, it might look completely different in a few months.