Let's say you're a subscriber to Newsweek, or you get the New York Times Magazine with your Sunday paper. Within the last few months, you probably noticed that each of these magazines went through a redesign -- new fonts, new layouts, new look. But let's say in that first redesigned issue, or maybe the second, the magazine contained multiple articles from its regular writers with titles like, "Our New Redesign: Why I Think It Sucks." That would be a shocker: One of the principles of publishing is that, generally speaking, you want to convince people that the publication in their hand is actually really great, and they should keep buying it.
Yet that's just what happened with The Atlantic's Web site. They unveiled a site redesign last week, and their writers promptly went to town on it. "It is no secret within our organization that I think the new design creates problems for the magazine's 'personal' sites, like the one I have been running here these past few years," said James Fallows. Ta-Nehisi Coates related his readers' complaints, and agreed with most of them. "I never saw the whole redesign before it was launched and I was not included in the process at all," noted Andrew Sullivan, adding, "I don't like what was done to my own page much." Sheesh!
Anyone who has participated in a Web site redesign knows it is an excruciating process, one that involves large amounts of money, endless meetings, and inevitable resentments (few things are more frustrating than your clueless colleagues voting for the blue banner when the maroon banner would have been so obviously superior). But I've never seen a publication, either print or electronic, give its writers permission to air their own candid opinions and complaints about it in the way the Atlantic has. So good for them, I guess -- score one for the openness and transparency fostered by the Web.
Postscript: If you're curious about what goes into a print redesign, you can look at this interesting piece, with lots of before-and-after pictures, about the recent redesign of the Times Magazine.
-- Paul Waldman
