EDITOR’SNOTE
03 2010
REFRESH, REBOOT
I WAS AWAY FOR ABOUT A WEEK IN DECEMBER, and when I
got back home, my wife sprung a surprise on me. “Why
don’t you go upstairs and rest?” she asked, and it made
me wonder for a second—why her uncharacteristic concern for my jet lag? Eventually I obeyed and opened the
door to a semitransformed bedroom. The furniture was
the same, but the room itself was sparser, minimalist,
with a chic, up-to-date color scheme. I was floored, to
say the least.
That’s a long way of saying welcome to the new
Corporate Counsel. The magazine, like my room, is more
elegant, cleaner-looking, and bang up-to-date.
It’s change or die these days in a lot of industries, not
least media. And, frankly, magazines need to mix things
up periodically. Fashions change, and more importantly,
redesigns force editors and reporters to reexamine what
they do. And so it was with us—we’ve kept what works
(the basic furniture), but improved its organization and
presentation.
The splendid new look is the work of our art director,
Morris Stubbs. He’s a deeply visual guy who also under-
stands how content should be displayed to best advan-
tage. He and I started to think about the redesign when
our editors and Web designers went to work on our new
Web site. Among other things, we tried to figure out how
the print and digital realms should coexist, both in their
look and feel and their content. While putting together
the previous few issues, Morris tinkered on the side with
fonts, display type, and all the logos and department
headers to make each section “pop” from the new pages.
And we worked to give the new CC more interactive fea-
tures, which would com-
plement the Web site.
Anthony Paonita
apaonita@alm.com
