BusinessWeek redesign emphasizes news and global coverage

Lucia Moses of MediaWeek writes that the BusinessWeek redesign means that some softer parts of the magazine have been dropped to emphasize the business weekly’s news and global coverage.

Moses wrote, “With its first redesign in four years, the magazine drops its lifestyle column, Executive Life, while upping the emphasis on news and global coverage. In a dramatic change to the cover, art director Andrew Horton, working with Boston-based ad agency Modernista!, replaced the serif logo with a smaller, sans-serif logo and jettisoned the blue bar that separated the logo from the cover image.

“‘The notion was, it’s clean, simple, it’s bold but elegant, and kind of straightforward,’ explained Stephen Adler, editor in chief. Detailing the changes in an interview today, Adler said he began looking at overhauling the book right after taking the job in December 2004. ‘The reader is much busier, they’re much more engaged with the global economy than they were before, and they’re consuming business information way differently from the way they used to.’

“Inside, a new organization and design seeks to reflect those changes, Adler said. A briefs section is expanded to four-and-a-half from one-and-a-half pages, while a four-page section of lighter news is reduced to two. A numbers-heavy page of financial charts is replaced with a one that’s more colorful, easier on the eyes and contextual.”

Read more here.