Memphis Business Journal launches rare redesign

Bill Wellborn, the editor of the Memphis Business Journal, writes about the rarity of the redesign at the American City Business Journals paper that was unveiled on Friday.

Wellborn writes, “It hasn’t happened too often. I wasn’t around for the first one, which came in 1983 and changed the biweekly Mid-South Business into Memphis Business Journal with a design that was not unlike The Wall Street Journal during its heyday of gray pages.

“Our pages were gray, too. We had an original illustration, much like an editorial cartoon, to go along with one of our front page stories.

“We made a big change in 1990 when, for the first time, we used a photograph on Page One instead of an illustration. Pretty radical, huh?

“We added some color around 1998, then underwent a major redesign to mark our 20th anniversary in 1999. The design was tweaked again in 2005 and we had been using pretty much the same model until we began ushering in some format changes last year.

“What you see this week is the culmination of a process that began more than a year ago.

“And what you see is not the traditional business journal. We have spent the past several months reinventing the way we deliver news. Our new design in print complements what we now deliver online, at events and through social media.”

Read more here.