New Work
05.14.13
Birth of a Magazine: Houstonia
You were in Seattle working when you found out that your company was starting up a magazine in your home town. What were your thoughts?
"Hell
yes!" was probably the first thing that came to mind. Our owner--Nicole Vogel--and her brother Scott are both originally from Houston. They grew up here and lived here for years, so I think a little part of
them had always wanted to do this. When Nicole came into one of our
editorial/company "status report" meetings and mentioned the idea of
launching a new publication in Houston I about jumped out of my seat. Being a native Houstonian I've said for years that this city
needed--no deserved--a good city 'zine, but I had really just
given up hope that it would ever actually happen. After that meeting I
marched straight down to Nicole's office and told her that if she
seriously moved forward with this idea that I was all-in.
Can
you give us a bit of history on magazine publishing in Houston? Our
understanding is that it might be the largest city in the country that
hasn't really had a steady city magazine.
Well,
your understanding is completely correct. Houston is an odd and unique
place. It's a pretty remarkable city that has largely been overlooked
for years. And people in Houston know it. There have been several
fly-by-night smaller magazines come and go--most of which have been
free pubs. There's a pretty solid alternative weekly in The Houston Press, a small freebie zine called 002 and a Modern Luxury title in Houston (which
is also free). Some people in the area also read Texas Monthly, but
there are a lot of people in this city that have had a rather big chip
on their shoulder for years that this city doesn't get enough of the
editorial coverage it deserves in that magazine. It's sad, too, because
to me this is the greatest city in Texas hands-down.
Being the original DD for a magazine brand comes with quite a few unexpected design responsibilities. Any of them surprise you?
Oh,
man. Where to begin? Being the DD here has been nothing short of
surprising. I luckily have a pretty solid background with branding and
advertising from my days in the ad agency realm and college years. It's funny, because a
large majority of my time in the months leading up to this launch
weren't spent doing actual editorial design--they were spent
researching brands, digging through thousands of typefaces, helping
choose paint swatches (for the color of the house), hiring staff,
redesigning media kits, laying out rough looks of the website, designing
slides for our Viewmaster Save-The-Dates, working with printers and
designing launch party invitations and scheduling meeting after meeting
with possible future contributors. And being a bit of a startup you
have to do all sorts of things you never really planned on or imagined. I mean, I was helping pick out desks, arrange our art department, buy
all of our art supplies, help set up computer workstations, move
equipment to temporary offices and more. Hell, I was putting toilet
paper in the bathroom and bringing in paper towels from home to make
sure we had something to dry our hands with the first few months!
How did you decide to approach the task of developing a magazine from scratch? What was your philosophy in setting the design tone?
How did you decide to approach the task of developing a magazine from scratch? What was your philosophy in setting the design tone?
This was tough for me because there's really no hard and fast rule for
this sort of thing. It's not everyday you launch a magazine literally from the ground up, so I sort of just broke things down and attacked them one at a time.
First,
I started with the basics--build the brand identity. We needed a logo
before we could do nearly anything, so I started with that. But
as I was in the process of creating the logo I was also researching the
typefaces that would be the base of the magazine. I feel like the
typefaces can really help do a lot of the heavy lifting in
creating the overall identity and feel of publication (or really any
brand for that matter), as well as started loosely deciding on a color
palette. After getting those bases covered I was pretty bogged down
with more of the marketing, sales and advertising side of things for
weeks. There was trying to implement a "look" into the media kit,
business cards, letterhead, splash page, etc., that would fit the
overall look of the publication - which is tricky because the
publication hasn't been created yet. But we needed these items as sales
tools to get other parts of the company up and running.
Second,
I started attacking the editorial side of things with the creation of
the design template. Luckily, I already knew the size dimensions and
what to expect from our other sister publications Seattle Met and Portland Monthly. Loosely using what they had done as a rough base, I started my template
in a very similar fashion, looking at margins, columns, baseline grids
and the typographic style sheets. Keep in mind, there was pretty
ridiculous amount of research along every step--from digging through
archival photos of Houston's visual past to tearing apart every other
regional and national magazine I could get my hands on to really
contemplating why they are making the decisions they do. I really have
André Mora in Seattle to thank for that--he really engrained that into
my mindset from the year and a half I spent working with him. At the
end of the day you want to make a magazine that's legible. I think editorial designers sometimes get so caught up in doing stuff that's
creative and different and outside-the-box that we forget to do the
thing that really matters the most--make things as readable as they can be.
That said--I'm a pretty firm believer in changing things up as
much as possible. None of these things are major advances in the way we
do things, but they're just different. For instance, I went with
an 11-column grid for our templates. So what that ends up doing is
giving us these odd columns that I like to call "gap columns." But
instead of getting annoyed by them (what do you mean I can't make
a simple 2 column or 3 columns layout that fits the grid?!?). I just
embraced them and really explored what they were capable of. And
honestly, they're really quite fun! It gives us the chance to help
steer the direction of what our editors can do by giving them space to
add additional information into the columns (fun facts, web callouts, by
lines, credits, etc.), and it gives us the chance to add additional
design "twists" to each page that can help make each page feel unique
and different--but still cohesive as a whole.
Another fun little touch
is pulling the folios and department head tags into the grid instead of
leaving them floating outside in the margin. Our folios are actually
tucked up inside our column, which means I can pull the baseline down
farther and keep the margins smaller and even all the way around the
page (except the inside where the gutter needs a bit more space). Same
goes for the departments. I feel like those are always a bit of wasted
page space. I took a cue from the web and figured it's really only
navigational.