The 151-year old American magazine The Atlantic just had a redesign. Since that very magazine employs quite a few political bloggers that I read every day, and since their posts tend to be peppered with links to new Atlantic ad campaigns and various articles, including some about the redesign, I couldn’t escape it.

I love seeing how magazines are put together. We get the issue and it seems as though it’s always existed, that the typesetting and layout has never really changed, just because of the combined weight of all the issues before it. So when a magazine (even one I don’t read on paper like The Atlantic) changes its design and shows us exactly how it was done, I’m fascinated.

Instead of just a simple layout refresh, the magazine went all out and hired Pentagram for the design and Havas (well, a subsidiary of international agency Havas) for some eye-catching promotional work.

What I love about seeing this process is that we get some rejected design ideas. While I initially thought the new cover was a bit too busy (it looks like a wordle diagram), future issues will feature photography, and the idea of the first one was to push the flow of ideas that emenate from the magazine’s writers. Look at the rejected idea on the left: although I like the design, I think it’s too backward looking and sits in the realm of “we are a prestigious magazine”, which is a design I believe the Atlantic’s editors were trying to escape from. The New Yorker’s already got that aesthetic side of the market sewn up. Plus the design on the right seems a touch too contemporary–there’s no acknowledgement whatsoever of the “timelessness” of the Atlantic Brand. Here’s lead graphic designer Michael Bierut:

The Atlantic, we discovered, demands a careful balance between intellectual engagement and entertainment. In a magazine of ideas, writers depend on words to build their arguments, but we didn’t want The Atlantic’s pages to look like homework. Nor did we want to diminish the gravitas that its subjects demand by larding the book with graphic tricks that could be rightly dismissed as eye candy.

One of the main examples is this site here, called Think Again, which is (sort of) also called The Atlantic Project. It contains a series of great photography–neon signs that ask specific questions, which then open up to show a video, a blog post full of comments, and of course, a relevant Atlantic article that generated the idea.

Some innovative ideas were brought to the marketing, as well: The Atlantic is advertising on an entirely new surface: muffin tops. They’re also planning restaurant menus and drugstore shampoo shelves. The point is to reach people where they “eat, buy takeout food, and shop,” which is “where people’s brains are most at rest.” The idea is to create a jolt: small and subtle advertising about “big ideas” where you’d least expect it.

Francesco Franchi is a Milan-based designer whose work we first picked up through a link to some of his recent work. I was most impressed by the shots of thesis, called Il Re Designer, which is generously exhibited all over his site.

A word about Italian University: here, a lot of work is put into the ceremonial presentation of theses. Graduation is a very big, formal deal (check out this excellent post on how far this tradition goes back). As a result, even the measliest little print shop stuck in the back of an alley and cluelessly selling DVD-Rs for 5 euros each, will bind your thesis in full, glorious hardcover style. They’ll even take your messy, unorganized word .doc and sort it all out for you, too.

This means when you’re doing a masters at a big-time Milanese University, and this masters is in communication design, and you fancy yourself an Italian designer–you had better make that thesis damn beautiful.

The title is a play on words: “il redesigner” means simply “the redesigner”, but when you separate the word “re”, as he’s done, it becomes “the king designer”. Something like “the designer as king” makes more sense in English, which fits in with his argument that the design of a newspaper is fundamental to its meaning, and should be integrated into the publishing philosophy as an crucial part, rather than simply compartmentalized as the aesthetic presentation of content.

Beyond academia, Franchi has also co-designed the layout for the less-business-y insert to Milano’s big time business paper, Il Sole 24 Ore. It plays with the beginning article from the newspaper’s title (it just means ‘the’), creating an acronym for Intelligence in Lifestyle. I don’t tend to give much time to business papers here in Italy, but maybe I’ll start picking this one up on Fridays and see just what Intelligence in Lifestyle actually means.

Book design needs more attention than it gets. I was all primed to write up some fine recent examples of the art that I’ve recently come across, except I got completely distracted by stumbling upon a ridiculously good series put out by Penguin, called Great Ideas. The third edition of this set got plenty of attention from blogs when it came out recently, but it turns out the entire line, from series 1-3, is absolutely packed with great typography and some fresh, creative cover work done within the self-imposed constraints of a run like this.

The idea behind the titles is simple: the biggest of the world-changing “idea” books in digestible, consistent forms. It should be noted these aren’t really “books” at all; most of them are treatises, essays, or the most important extracts from larger works. All of them are well and seriously chosen, but running through the whole series is a light, joyful touch that never lets up, and comes through in the design. These are playful covers and even more playful titles: there was never actually a book by Frederick Nietzsche entitled Why I Am So Wise, but there is now (it was, however, originally a well-titled chapter in his Ecce Homo).

Simon Winder, who edits the series, explains that “the intention with each book was to isolate it and represent it to modern readers so that they can relive in some measure just what made the writing so urgent and astonishing at the time.”

Speaking of isolating good writing, I’ve never seen another series of books in which prose extracts were used to such perfect effect on the front covers. Look at Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations! “A little flesh, a little breath, and a reason to rule all–that is myself.” Laid out like it is, the extract takes on far more weight than were it lost on the back flap, center-justified and surrounded by vague ellipses; it begs to be read. And then we have The Communist Manifesto cover, which shows deference to the importance of its original text while having fun with the hyperbolic prose any such manifesto is bound to contain–and this is still just the first series.

Looking at the blue-themed second set, The Book of Revelation and the Book of Job is sending me out to the bookshelf to find a bible right now, while Marco Polo’s Travels in the Land of Kubilai Khan makes the man with words of praise. And for anyone who’s read Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, and found it memorable, you’ll fall in love with what Penguin’s done.

Finally we come to the third series: everyone got real excited for Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, and justifiably so (it’s the one with all the repeating spines displayed as its cover). I say any piece of good design that draws people towards the endless well of Benjamin’s beautiful writing is nothing less than a positive addition to the good of the whole damn world. You’ve probably also noticed that the series has switched to green by this point, while my coveting of the entire run has switched to a kind of obsessive panging. A great Kierkegaard cover and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s most famous essay round out the sampling.

Finding great book design that’s consistently held up over the course of sixty titles is a rare thing indeed, and Penguin should be celebrated for it. And I’ll do that, then–celebrate them, I mean–somehow or other. There’s probably some wine here somewhere.

Big words from the publisher:

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are.