Redesigns
07.19.10
First Look: Travel + Leisure Redesign
As reported, the August 2010 issue of Travel + Leisure features a major redesign for the travel book. Creative Director Bernard Scharf and his Art Directors, Mark Maltais and Wendy Scofield, sent us a look at the new, larger logo and the reformatted interior pages, after the jump...The magazine's new logo:
Pages from the front and back-of-book sections:
Above: a sample of the News Flash pages
Above: some of the Style pages
Above: new pages from the T+L Insider section
Above: a sample Strategies page and the 'My Favorite...' profileFrom the August 2010 feature well:
The refreshed T+L is on newsstands now -- pick one up and let us know what you think!
Wow! I think this redesign looks great: bold, fresh and exciting. The simple tweak of the logo makes so much more sense and pops on a newsstand. I like how they say the design is "refreshed" and not a whole new reinvention. Smartly, the new design doesn't alienate current readers but gives it enough of a new look which was it was definitely time for. Congrats to the new creative director and his team.
I take it comments that aren't glowing, are not accepted on this blog interesting... So much for free speech!
T+L was looking tired, and it's such a great refresh! Really poppy and fun, and fantastic typographic choices. Love the Scala! (that is scala, innit?) Congrats to the T+L team!
If I see one more use of Gotham, I'm going to vomit. I don't like morticed type either
The travel photography in T+L is usually beautiful. I think it's sad to cover so much of it up with white boxes filled to the brim with type. And even if the photo is a stock image, I don't think even a less-than-beautiful photo can stand being covered up in this way. It only drags it down even more.
Would it not be better to use photos that afford the space, or to devise a design that can accomodate text in other ways and places, or to ask editors to cut?
That last one was a joke.
Not good.
The logo looks much better and layouts looks fresh and neat. However, I'm not a big fan of white text boxes on the image. I think the white boxes just don't do justice to the brilliant photos used in the magz.
I find the new look a bit jarring. I want to WANT to get away, lose myself in a travel magazine but I can't because, as Jana and Tarak point out, the beautiful photos are often cut into with a white box filled with type. This might be a more appropriate treatment in a different pub. I do like the new logo though.
I'm disappointed. When I heard T+L was re-designing, I was thrilled to see what creative, sophisticated and clever ways they could evolve their visual identity. Instead I find myself inundated by tightly cropped, suffocating type treatments that blemish what should be incredibly fresh and engaging photographic elements. Aren't we missing the demographic here entirely, folks? Uh, TRAVEL and LEISURE? It's in the name, yet somehow not conveyed. Save for the feature well, this design lacks a desire to connect with the reader and relies more on what I see as trendy type gimmicks. Shall we stop focusing on originality when in its process, it kills the fundamentals and dismisses it's target audience?
P.s. making the logo bigger doesn't make it better. :)
Love the logo, it will do great on newsstand for overall presence.
My one comment is... why has it become popular to junk up photography with a lot of colored boxes and design elements?
I would think a travel magazine's mission should be to entice the reader to visit these places through their imagery, but to be covering up some of the most interesting focal points with all that extra stuff, communicates what... That you dont have strong enough art for it to stand alone or you're just following the trends of what everyone else is doing? There are too many redesigns going on right now that look "inspired" by other magazines. What happened to redesigning for the reader? Great design, is great design. Not.. Ohhhh, I love what these guys is doing in their magazine.. Were totally going to use that.
last line correction. "are doing"
damn it, hate when I catch a typo after posting.