1. Untitled.
- Author
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GERALD MARZORATI
- Subjects
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PERIODICALS , *NEWSPAPERS , *JOURNALISM - Abstract
The magazine you are holding is 9 percent smaller -- a little off the top, a little off the sides -- than the issue you held last week. This is not the first cut of the ''trim'' size of The New York Times Magazine in its 100-yearplus history. That makes it no less regrettable. We liked being one of the tallest and widest magazines in America -- and actually, we remain so (just less so). But the Great Recession, coming at a time when newspapers and magazines were already struggling to adjust to the Internet age, has put tremendous pressure on print publications to and savings that do not threaten the essential things they offer their readers. Global demand for paper is high; thus the cost of paper is high; thus using less paper in each issue we produce will save millions of dollars, money we can use to continue to pay for the long-form journalism and ambitious photography we call our pages with each week. And speaking of those pages, the cut in trim size does not mean there is 9 percent less room on every page for words and pictures. This week we are introducing a new typeface, Lyon Text, that was designed by Kai Bernau and Christian Schwartz and will be used exclusively by the magazine. It is more condensed than our previous typeface -- with the result that the words-per-page tally has hardly been affected. Perhaps if we hadn't mentioned it, you would hardly know the difference. What you are sure to have noticed is our new design. When we were told last winter that our dimensions were being downsized, we took a cue from Rahm Emanuel -- we muttered lots of words we aren't allowed to print, then saw how our ''crisis'' might present an opportunity: a redesign. The magazine's look had not changed much during this decade, and for at least one good reason: We have annually won a raft of design awards, including the 2007 magazine-of-the-year-award from the Society of Publication Designers. But every object can use a bit of refurbishing now and then, and that is what our art director, Arem Duplessis, and his staff have done -- they've given the magazine a cleaner, more modern feel without changing what we are and do. We are introducing new display-type faces -- Knockout (by the studio Hoeffer & Frere-Jones) and Nyte (by the Portuguese designer Dino dos Santos) -- along with a brighter and more contemporary color palette. You will notice new design elements in our front-of-the-book columns, a new table of contents and the introduction of a series of icons to guide you to our Web content. On the puzzles page you can now play KenKen. And you will find our food pages at the front of the magazine, where they belong, as the Way We Eat is surely an aspect of the Way We Live Now. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
- Published
- 2009