A New Look Field & Stream

Over the last few months Field & Stream Design Director Sean Johnston and his hard working art and photo teams have been pretty busy. Not only do they now over-see the design and production of all the Bonnier outdoor titles (including Outdoor Life, Shot Business and the ASME and SPD favorite Field & Stream) but since taking the reins they've been quietly and smartly retooling each of these legendary all-American brands. The OL redesign was a gradual one which they rolled out over a series of issues last year...Field & Stream on the other hand got a front to back redesign all at once, the results of which are available on newstands across the country today. Here Johnson reveals his philosophy and gives us a preview of some terrific looking pages...

Johnston: Initially we discussed the restructure of Field & Stream at a team off-site (remember those?) last summer in Louisiana. Editor-in-chief Anthony Licata asked deputy editor Colin Kearns and myself to open the discussion to our team to revamp the FOB. To start, we decided to add a proper Editors page with contributors' photos and bios. Next, we dropped one of our photo spreads so we could use the second later in the book for visual pacing. We cleaned up the letters pages, ridding them of all the clutter and added a new page called "The Latest" where the edit team can promote new online features--or talk about pretty much anything.

The biggest change was replacing our old Bullet Points section--a series of news and how-to columns written by our regular contributors--with a fresh editorial department called Campfire. The editors wanted to see more freedom within the section to deliver a richer mix of content as well as showcase new writers.

In order to reflect these changes in the new design, we incorporated the following elements: a grid so layouts have more variety to accommodate any editorial approach; development of new section opener designs; and a reduction of the article text point size allowing room for the design to breathe. We also added new fonts, new navigation with icons designed by Tim Boelaars, and Pete Sucheski, spot-writer illustrations by Michael Hoeweler, plus we established consistent looks for sidebars. In looking at the old design [ed's note: careful here Sean...], we decided to clean out the antiquated busy color system and replaced it with a simple black, red, and gray color palette, which we continue through all of the departments. The feature well is where we will bring back all the color. Our main aim for the new design is to make it cleaner, more modern, and dynamic--while not losing the core design that we feel readers are accustomed to in Field & Stream.

Fonts used in the revamp are Dharma Gothic, as seen on the main cover line; Glosa, a clean modern serif for FOB headlines and introductions; and Tungsten, a great condensed headline font. For our department openers and navigation, we wanted a font with personality and a touch of nostalgia, so we worked in Chalet Comprimé (House Industries), which we mixed the stencil Los Angeles with the rounded Hong Kong.

As a special treat this month, our entire feature well is devoted to one 24-page cover package consisting of 18 amazing stories from our writers and photographers--all of whom are displayed on the front cover in this amazing Jesse Lenz illustration. It is something completely new and dynamic for a Field & Stream cover, yet something that will doubtlessly appeal to the diehard F&S reader. For the feature itself, we worked with all of our favorite photographers and illustrators, including Thomas Allen, Noma Bar, Craig Cutler, Travis Rathbone, Dan Saelinger, Adam Voorhes, Alexandra Wells, Jamie Kripke, and Andrew Wright. Again, we introduced a fresh look with new fonts etc, but we did keep hold of Field & Stream's custom font Jubilat for the headlines which we had laser carved out of wood and photographed.