Could you give us more info on the readership, like average age, etc.?

Also: The point-size & word-count you typically use in the headlines - does it benefit from a condensed design?

hhp

hrant,

readership age is fairly mixed but the most prominent age group would be early 30's to early 40's...i would guess target age is about 33/34....definitely geared toward people with money (my sentiments are the readers are just out of touch with what's hip and want to feel hip by reading articles about hip things...supposedly hip. whatever that means)

as for the treatment of the text benefiting from a condensed standpoint; no, not really. although they usually use it for single words and 3 lines...sort of develops a squareish composition of 3 words....although when one word is significantly shorter than the others it gets tracked all to hell to fit. argh. it makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.

i guess my feeling is there are better faces to use besides supersizing folio and tracking it out to fit in a space. i just dont think slamming type into a system like that is good for anyone but it's their consistent look and the funny thing is it looks awful and seems to not fit with the rest of the mag. it would be like taking the cover page of a bad tabloid and using at the cover for the wall street journal. neither of the two support the other so there is just a lack in flow. so i'd really like to propose a differnet face to use for these headlines...or better yet develop something. i just started this job about 2 1/2 months ago so my outgoing attitude is still at level high, although i am told that goes away, but it would be really nice to be charged with designing a new family of typeface for use in a magazine

(apologize for jabbering on....)
will

After 2 1/2 months, you might not be in a position to push for changes, regardless of how much the magazine needs them. It took me a year to get a redesign into the pipeline for the two mags that I art direct, and another year to get them out the door that way. And I was in charge of the way the looked!

Elle has always had a great look to me, as far as fashion goes. Wallpaper, another great looking magazine (well, it used to be great, when they used Compacta and tons of muted colors).

I think that House Industries' Chalet and House Gothic work nicely for that modern feel. Also Neutraface works well for that (and there's a new condensed just released as well). And, I think that Linotype just released a new version of Metro, which has always seemed like a quintesstially mid-century modern face to me.

Best thing to do is just plug new faces into the layouts and see how they work. Modern stretched a whole gamut of styles, everything from the super-clean geometrics to over-styled faces like Torino. I'd suggest looking at other magazines for inspiration, and seeing how they are using other type well.

Hope that helps.

hey, thanks for the help. i've snuck in a few of this and that every now and then just to see what happens. since i have control over certain areas of the mag (mostly special sections that crossover the line of ad and editorial) i have a little more free range of what i can do. you are most likely right, though, in the sense that only being around for such a short time, not many will listen to me sound off about good type and bad type....even though i think they should....but in time. we'll see. could be a good 'down the road' oppurtunity. thanks again

> out of touch with what's hip and want to feel hip

OK, so your typical "fashiony/modern living type magazine" then. :-)

> although when one word is significantly shorter than the others it gets tracked all to hell to fit.

Hmmm, what about a font that actually accomodates this practice?
Check out pages 34-37 in this PDF from Molotro:
http://www.molotro.com/pdf/LP08092004.pdf

And what about the terminally-hip Panoptica by Nick Shinn?

hhp

no, seriously hrant, it's an interesting idea on pages 34-37. the first time i ran into something like visually spelled out was in a book called ABZ: modernist alphabets or something something....it's at home and i'll have to look it up, but it was a collection of lots of long lost specimens, experiments, ads and ideas. one of the experiment/ideas was this strange diagramatical type study where long strips were pieced together to make a letter extended...in addition to the verticals and horizontal bars, there were curves of different length and size. the type family would be pretty geometric it's it's raw form, but the idea really stuck with me. i guess it would sort of be like adding lead to the letter itself in a way.

i 100% agree with you that something that can adapt is something worth using or considering. i like the idea of letters and lines of type growing and contracting depending on the situation. it's a little out there right now for a printed magazine but who knows....i'm constantly thinking how technology is going to adapt our alphabets and the way we lay those letters down. 3-dimensionality and digital enviornments may change a whole lot of stuff in the areas of navigation and sensible interface. again, i'm following an obscure tangent.

i think in this case the best solution that all parties would agree on is that what makes most sense is something that is adaptable and workable. the biggest problem i have with magazine right now is that they choose faces for being pretty with no thought involved so you get a lot of faces which are just that; faces. a one cut deal. no light version, no bold version and everything is an imitation rape in quark 4.1. push a bold button and you got a fake bold. it hurts. it really does. so yeah, after some time, i'll definitely have to jump in and say enough is enough. for now though, i'll just continue to be the quiet rebel and sneak what i can in when i get a chance...

-best
will

Here's another idea:
The Porchez font Anisette has caps of two widths; by using the narrows for long lines and the wides for short line, in combination with tracking (which would thereby be pretty gentle) you could end up with some nice blocks. It's also a very elegant font, and sort of hip, with some cool ligatures. And Anisette Petite has a lowercase.

hhp