Louanne Welcome to “Covering the Spread, Magazine Design for the Next Age,” a monthly discussion of all things related to our favorite medium, magazines.

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Scott Whether you're a seasoned designer, an aspiring creative, an editor or publisher, or just someone who appreciates the art of storytelling through visuals, this is the place for you.

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Louanne  I’m your host, Louanne Welgoss from LTD Creative, a graphic design firm located in Frederick, Maryland, and I've been working on publications for thirty-two years. You can see our work at LTDCreative.com.

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Scott  And I'm Scott Oldham from Quarto Creative, who's been making magazines for twenty-five years. You can see my work at QuartoCreative.com. And on this podcast, we'll chat with industry experts, designers, editors, and production pros to uncover the secrets of all things magazine.

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Louanne  It's time to turn the page and what you thought you knew and reimagine the future of publishing.

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Scott Welcome to the next episode of Covering the Spread. We are joined today by Steve Traynor. Steve, could you introduce yourself to our audience, please?

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Steve I'm the design director of print for MIT Sloan Management Review, working out of the greater Boston area. I work out of a small studio among my many other gigs. I do other work for tech publishers as well, but the MIT is my primary gig right now.

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Scott So for anybody who's not familiar with MIT Sloan Management Review, can you kind of walk us through an issue and tell us what we would find if we were regular readers?

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Steve The intended audience is for management, executives, leaders, CEOs and other executives. I wasn't super aware of it until some friends of mine landed there. And I think when you're in a concentrated area and there's a few magazines around, you kind of get to know what those magazines are. So I have been aware of it for a while. And some — like I mentioned — some of my friends landed there and I was alerted to the opportunity to start purchasing art for them. And that led to a bunch of other opportunities, and I ended up accepting the design director role for them. I've been the design director for print since about… full time, about two and a half years.

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Scott So we're talking today about the ever-present topic in magazine design, the Death of Print. We've been hearing about it pretty much our whole careers, those of us who have been around long enough to remember the dot-com bubble and bust. Why hasn't print died yet? What are we missing? What is the weapon that's finally going to kill it?

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Louanne Yeah, this is a this is a really interesting topic because they've been talking about “print is dead” since about 2008. But you know, people continue to stay connected to print because it offers a tactile, distraction-free experience and qualities that are often lost in digital media. There's a lot of institutions that continue to invest in print to build trust, quality, reach niche audiences. And there's a lot of luxury companies in magazines and mostly universities that use print as a high-impact medium to pretty much cut through the digital noise. So that's what we're going to talk about today is: It's the decline of print that never really was the decline of print. It was only a little bit of a decline.

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Scott So let's put this in context a little bit, because a lot of people listening will be well aware that there are a myriad of magazines that simply do not exist anymore that we all grew up with, or at least that we have a lot of experience with. And it does tend to be — this is not an absolute rule — but it tends to be more general interest publications. I know that just in the last two weeks or so, there were a number of supermarket tabloids that just closed up shop. They had a big round of layoffs at Inc. magazine, which is somewhat of a specialty publication, but still at the more broad range of financial information. So what is that being replaced with? What are you seeing in your own studio experiences, or what you see on the newsstand, or what or what you consume? And that's something maybe we should talk a little bit about is what do we read and why do we read them?

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Steve I kind of feel like if you have a hobby that there's a magazine out there for you. Like, I think there was the one thing that impressed me upon going to any Barnes & Noble or Harvard Coop, that no matter what your hobby is, there's a magazine out there for you. And I could see the benefit of wanting to buy a magazine rather than just looking online for this — for resources like that — because it's something you can save … refer back to … bookmark.

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Louanne Well, this there's just something about, I think the hobbyists that really that it really resonates with. You can take it with you everywhere. I mean, you can take it with you in the car, the airplane … places where you don't necessarily have access to the internet, but you can't do that with your laptop or– I mean, you can a lot of times use your phone, but, I mean, it's so small. And that's the beauty of a lot of these print magazines.

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Scott I'm sure you've both, in your professional experience, had occasion to have a client or a publisher or someone say, we're going to reduce printing, we're going to stop printing, and we're going to move it online. So can you talk a little bit about what the rationale for that was, or at least what the stated rationale was? I think we all know the underlying rationale is always money. No one has ever stopped printing because it was too cheap. Right? What has been one of the major challenges, particularly since the pandemic for publishers — and I'm not just talking about newsstand, but all across the industry — is paper. The cost of paper, and in particular, the availability of paper, has become a major challenge for printers and for publishers because so many paper mills have either consolidated, closed, or they've stopped producing actual paper for the production of things like magazines and catalogs and so forth, because they're spending so much of their resources on producing cardboard boxes for our online shopping habits.

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Louanne At least in my house, I get packages every day. A couple of magazines that I work on have ceased to print, starting with Covid. I've lost two magazines to online only. They're just the contents being produced online, not even the magazine. It started out during Covid where we couldn't get paper. I remember one issue … We literally had to get two different stocks of paper that were so similar that really only people like us would have noticed. And then after that, they had to order it so much in advance that it just became difficult because we just didn't really know the page count that far in advance. So we were ordering probably more paper than we really needed. But the reason why they stopped publishing: It came down to money, just like it always does. The cost to buy the paper, print, and then the mailing on top of that was just astronomical. And that was the first thing that they all looked to cut. They just decided it wasn't worth their time and effort, which is very disappointing, obviously.

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Scott So when they made the transition away from print, did they have a digital strategy prepared for it or was it all ad hoc?

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Louanne It's all ad hoc. They simply did away with it. And now they have just the news section in their website and they just update their news daily. I did look and see and they don't really have feature stories like they did anymore. But they do have some interviews with people but they're not getting into super in-depth stories about companies, or people, or what's happening in the industry like they once were. And that's the case for both of the associations that I have done work for.

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Scott So, Steve, how much visibility do you have to the transition between the magazine content and the online content at Sloan Management Review?

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Steve Sometimes we'll pick up stories that originated online. Many other times, though, we're getting original stories from the authors. And the funny thing is, with our publication, there's a real desire to be published in print. It's kind of a prestige thing. A lot of the authors want to see want to see their stuff in print. They think it adds validation. It's also vetted. I mean, there's editors. Copy editors. That's not to say it doesn't also happen online. I do have to work with the online team, in terms of graphics and making sure images get all the rights they need to go across print and online. So it was kind of funny. I don't really differentiate too much my approach because I think, in general, I'm always looking at a screen anyway, even if I'm designing for print. Everything's on a screen. So, the same design principles, I think, apply.

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Scott Well, what about when you throw social media into the mix, as most publishers are now? Do you find that you have to design differently when you know your cover isn't destined for the newsstand first, but is destined for Instagram or Facebook or something?

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Steve Initially, I think it's I actually find it kind of similar because, if you think about it, if you're designing for the newsstand, cover image and cover lines have to be large enough so they're viewed from a distance to catch somebody's eye. And I think when you're using the same approach for social media. You want a nice, bold, catchy, compelling cover that's gonna make want somebody to click on this and go to that link. So I always look at it as being the same problem that you're trying to solve. It affects who I want to choose to have a cover illustration. So I'm looking for people that can execute bold, simple, compelling images, which eliminates a lot of illustrators that I really, really like, to be honest, because their stuff is too involved for a cover — too finely detailed, maybe.

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Scott And just so people know you, every single issue of Sloan Management Review has an illustrated cover. Is that right?

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Steve Correct.

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Louanne Sloan Management Review is a consumer newsstand publication or is it not?

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Steve It is on the newsstands. So it also has a dedicated subscriber base, but it's all part of the ecosystem. Sloan also has videos. They have an app. They have newsletters, events, podcasts, research. So it's all part of the same ecosystem. So when you're designing for a cover, it's going to have a lot of legs. It's going to go many different places and be used to sell many different things. The subscription packages for MIT — and I'm sure this goes with a lot of other sites — is all encompassing. You can get subscription that involves the print magazine, newsletters, videos … lots of other goodies that try to keep the reader engaged.

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Louanne So I can see why finding an illustration that can reach all those different mediums and not take away from the nitty gritty of it would be important. I was just going to give you a couple of stats which I found interesting. Do you guys remember cooking magazines? Remember Gourmet magazine from a long time ago? Gourmet magazine shut down after 68 years in 2009, but there are still cooking magazines out there, which I find interesting because I know Food and Wine is still out on the newsstands. Newsweek ceased its print edition —  they ceased to print in 2012 — but they revived in 2014, which is another interesting stat. And there's a lot of niche and indie magazines, and I'm finding that a lot of them are international. There's one called Kinfolk. It's a lifestyle and culture magazine. There's another one called The Gentlewoman, a smart, stylish woman's magazine with a kind of a cult following. Sidetracked. I love the name Sidetracked. High quality print focused on adventure storytelling. Oh, and then we talk about branded publications. Gucci has one: a brand focused on gender equality. And then here's a big one: Trader Joe's. It's not really a magazine, but they still produce their Flyer. And, you know, a lot of big advertorials, though they're, what? Four pages in the Flyer? They talk about all the different things they have — new products and such. But in an age where a lot of these companies are doing away with it, Trader Joe's is still going strong.

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Scott Other grocery outlets have gotten into that. Costco has a magazine, as I'm sure you know, Walmart did. I assume they still do, which are which are not just the list of items on sale as Trader Joe's does. They actually have recipes and articles, and they try to make it more of an experience. But clearly it's reaching enough people that they are continuing to invest in it. Now, granted, they have money coming out of their ears. They can spend money on any kind of luxury product. Whereas for most publishers, as we all know, it's a tight margin, and making a profit off of a print magazine is not an easy thing to do. And I think we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about the advertising angle to it and what it means for advertisers to be in print, versus only having the opportunity to reach that audience online. The advertisers aren't getting the same time in exposure. When someone is consuming an online magazine piece… That is to say, if you have a full page ad in a print magazine, people are spending upwards of an hour with that print piece, whether they're spending it on an individual article or just with the whole thing as a unit is kind of beside the point. That ad is getting more time than it would typically get on a web page, where the average amount of time a person spends on it is about 15 seconds. So the ad has to fight with the online content for just some piece of that 15 seconds, which is obviously not a lot of time.

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Louanne Advertisers, just starting when the internet became a thing, they started to have to divide their money up amongst multiple channels. I know that. And between 2000 and 2015, magazine advertising revenue dropped by over 50%, and by 2015, the digital advertising surpassed print for the first time, with ad revenue shrinking year over year. So aside from the print costs, they couldn't counterbalance that with the ad costs because advertisers have multiple places to spend their ad money now. It's got to be frustrating to be an advertiser.

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Scott I wonder if this is a case of the tail wagging the dog, to the extent that the rise in niche publication would lead you to believe that they're also chasing niche advertisers who serve that very specific interest group that the magazine is speaking to. And I don't know if you've had this experience with your association clients, Louanne. I certainly did. When they would sunset the print magazine, which was at best, let's say, cost neutral. It was paying for itself through the advertising that they were selling, again, to a very, very specific audience. I mean, to an association audience, it's a very, very narrow slice of advertising that you're going after, but that there was no plan to make up that revenue with the online version of that, because you simply cannot charge the same amount to an advertiser for an online ad as you can for a print ad, if for no other reason than the cost of manufacture is so much lower, right? So they weren't able to charge the same rates for the program which was mostly being spent on creative.

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Louanne Yeah, that is true. You see a lot of really simple online ads that have much, much less real estate to get your point across. If you don't click, that's it — you're out. Whereas a print ad, you have a lot more real estate to share what it is that you want to share about your product or company.

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Steve Print ads are kind of hurting in that you can't really capture any information about the person that's viewing them. And the advertisers love it. They love knowing who's viewing what, when exactly for how long: the statistics they can use in real time. Print advertising definitely hurts in that regard, unfortunately.

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Disclaimer The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization, employer, or company they may be affiliated with. Covering the spread is intended for informational and educational purposes only. While we explore topics such as design trends, industry practices, and future predictions, The content shared should not be interpreted as professional advice or a definitive guide. Listeners are encouraged to conduct their own research Before making decisions related to magazine design, publishing, or business strategy. We may reference or discuss third-party content, technologies, or companies. These mentions are for context and commentary purposes and do not imply endorsement or affiliation unless explicitly stated. Additionally, given the ever-evolving nature of media and technology, some discussions may become outdated. We strive for accuracy, but we make no representations or warranties about the completeness or reliability of any information shared. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the spread.

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Louanne It's what I would think about, even with association magazines. If your company is mentioned in an article because you've done something breakthrough, or you've built something, or whatever it is that you've done, that's a great piece to have at a conference or a show: to have the magazine cover and then a reprint. Reprints — are they even happening anymore? I don't know.

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Steve Well, they are for MIT. I know that for a fact. There's a reprint number at the end of every article in our magazine. Again, it's everything. It's like, how much revenue can we get out of this content? All revenue is good. If you're an individual author, and you want some reprints of an article that landed in SMR that you want to carry over to your next conference, or maybe a speaking gig that you have, that's just sort of a way to continue the product and keep the revenue coming.

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Louanne It's true. So tell us more about this magazine. Have you been involved in discussions of cutbacks due to costs, and what insight can you tell us about what you've been involved in?

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Steve We're at 88 edit pages plus covers per issue, and it's a quarterly publication. We know pretty far ahead what the content is going to be. And, again, we're not any of these other newsy publications. So everything that we put out is thought pieces. Although recently with all the tariff stuff going on, we've been trying to put more timely pieces in the magazine to address some of those issues.

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Louanne Have they come to you and asked you to spend less money on anything at any given time?

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Steve I have a set budget every issue to buy art that really hasn't changed, although I try to save pennies when I can because I figure that's always appreciated. We have had to recently work more with online in terms of getting art that, at least for the cover — and we have special report stories that tie in with the cover —we're assigning all those pieces of art to the same illustrator. It's just more economical that way. The rest is just stock art. I would love to be able to hire illustrators to do that. So that's an ongoing process.

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Scott Can you think of any other magazines that you personally read or enjoy that you get or that have been around that you admire?

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Steve It's funny. There's some design publications I really like, like Communication Arts, I think, is still out there, if I'm not mistaken.

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Louanne Are they around still?

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Steve I think so.

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Louanne Is Print still print? I don't know.

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Scott Ironically, Print does not print. I think CA does, but I would be surprised if Print still does.

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Louanne I don't think Print does.

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Steve To be honest, I could think of a lot of magazines I used to like that aren't around anymore — more than ones that exist — but I'm typically the hobbyist mode. They have these interests … like, running magazines, I really like. I like The Economist for this kind of sparse aesthetic. I'm also looking for illustrators now, and I know they use a lot of illustrators and infographics, which I really enjoy reading. I like Outside magazine, even though, design wise, I can't really apply anything they do to what I do.

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Louanne I know, right?

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Steve Because …the great outdoors. Climbing mountains is all great photography, isn't it? It's really dramatic. You can't get that in every magazine.

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Scott I know. It's interesting you say that because I think — I mean, if we're really being honest with ourselves, how often do you regularly read a magazine for the design versus the subject?

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Steve Occasionally, if I'm in front of the racks, I'll pick something up and thumb through it. Especially design magazines. I couldn't name any off the top of my head, but that's what I'm saying. That's about design.

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Scott So that's one of your niches versus a magazine that you only pick up because it really looks good. Like everybody who I know claims to read Wired because it's an awesome-looking magazine and it does still print. How many people subscribe to it for that reason alone?

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Louanne No, exactly.

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Scott So listing the stuff that that I get as a physical magazine, it's things like Cook's Illustrated or Scientific American. They're just subjects that I'm interested in, and I don't really care about the design that much.

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Louanne On the flip side, though, there are some subject-based magazines out there that are terrible. They look awful.

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Scott Oh, absolutely.

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Louanne Maybe it's just because we're all snobby designers, but if I were interested in that particular subject, I don't know that I would want to pick up that magazine.

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Scott Oh for sure. There are plenty of topics that I'm very interested in. But the magazine literally puts me off. It's just someone who doesn't understand how to work in that medium, and it is a specialty. Let's face it: There are great designers out there who get really frustrated when it comes time to do a magazine, because it's not the same. It is not the same kind of approach that you take to a single page ad, or to a presentation or almost any other kind of medium. And you really have to learn it to do it well.

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Louanne Yeah, that's a good point, because, of my staff up here, I'm the only one that really gets magazine design. I'm that multi-page person, and not everybody can do it.

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Scott No. Exactly. And it's also thinking about it over the long term. And that's, I think, where you get the opportunity to build brand loyalty with an audience is by considering what the trajectory of the print publication is going to be over the course of someone's subscription to it. You are treating a topic — generally speaking, a niche topic — in greater and greater depth as that person becomes more and more experienced with the publication. And I feel like when you spend that much time with something like a print magazine and you really get down into the details of it, you should be rewarded for that effort.

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Louanne Obviously, if you have a tight editorial/art direction synergy, that's going to help with the brand loyalty, but it's also a consistent tone in branding across the magazine. Branding, being like The Economist, with their red mark. It's recognizable right away. Or National Geographic. We all know that that yellow border is National Geographic. A good magazine is going to resonate with the reader and is going to be something that's consistent over time. Visuals, voice, subject matter, whether it be the style of illustration and the same style over and over, you're not changing it at every issue — which most people don't. But there are some magazines that, I'm sure, do. It's like a grocery store. When they start moving things around, you get annoyed. You don't want to start moving everything around on them. Keeping that content organized and in a manner where it flows from from front to back.

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Steve We have an 88 page magazine, so it ends up being a bit like Tetris. At the end of the process, we see how close we are to the 88 pages, and then maybe we start talking about lopping a page off here, bumping a story to the next issue, there. And then we also have to deal with — and this is where the practical side comes up —  is that I'd love to have these real splashy opening spreads, but there's always a chance that an opening spread will have to be torn apart and made into a single page opener. So it really kind of constricts how I'm designing a lot of these pieces. It's very formatted, if that's the right word for that.

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Louanne So even the features are formatted so that they can be easily modified into a one page if need be?

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Steve Yeah. So it it kind of ties my hands a bit. I don't go nuts as, as much as I would like to. I think, initially, when I started, I thought I might be able to do that, but that wasn't the case.

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Louanne I think all three of us worked for more conservative-type clients, as opposed to some of these niche magazines that you see with the fonts are all over the place, and these crazy pictures. They're having a ball on those.

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Steve But basically everything is designed by me and laid out by me. So everything has a consistent aesthetic feel, for better or worse. And that includes all the infographics that I do for each issue, too.

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Louanne So every issue you've got, all the art, you've got all the content … then does all this art need to be resized and given to the digital designer?

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Steve Right. We just have to make sure that — and this is why I have to work with digital artists only — the cover has to be reformatted to a horizontal orientation. So part of the contract, when I'm assigning the cover illustration, is at the end of it … at the end of the day, this is going to have to somehow be formatted into a horizontal format to be used online. So that's probably the biggest ask that we make of that particular illustrator. And I've had to throw some extra money at a couple illustrators to entice them to get on board with that … to extend the edges.

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Scott It's a lot worse to have the publisher take that on themselves and just crop it arbitrarily, or the web developer or whoever's actually taking the stuff online.

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Steve Honestly, I love illustration and I wouldn't mess over an illustrator like that to say, “Oh, we'll just use AI and extend it.” That would be horrible. I really got to know the Graphic Artists Guild contracts when I was drawing up the contracts to use with our publications — very helpful in that regard. And one of the things they recommend was that the illustrator should always have first shot at modifying any original illustration, which, when you think about it, it's obvious, right? So we always give the illustrator the first pass at doing it. And so far, they've all stepped up to bat and been super about it. With stock images, you can go back to them and ask to modify illustrations. And that's been the case before, where our online art director will ask them, or get permission, to extend some backgrounds. And that's when we may use the Photoshop expand function. But it's always with the intent that we want it to make it look as if it’s respectful to the illustrator.

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Louanne Getting back to our original topic of print not being dead, it's about taking all of those things that we do for print — all the wonderful things we do — and modifying it for digital content. It's pretty astronomical, if you think about it, because t's just a given. You have an online art director that's a whole lot like what used to be a magazine with an art director. Now you have an online art director and you have a print art director. In your case, because of the magazine size, you have to have multiple people involved.

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Steve Yeah, and I'm sure the online part has expanded greatly in the past dozen years or so.

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Louanne Well, there might even be a social media person at that company.

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Steve Oh, there is.

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Louanne So that's three jobs right there. Not to mention ad sales. So that's four jobs.

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Steve But it's all it's all needed.

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Louanne So you really conclude: Print didn't die. It got bigger. The product itself got bigger. It just isn't just one thing anymore.

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Steve No. Very much true. Still part of the process. Part of the ecosystem.

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Scott I hate to use this term because it's so inside baseball, but it's a brand management system. Now, the magazine does not encompass a print magazine, and that term is almost not even relevant for a print vehicle anymore. The magazine is a brand. It's no different from Nike or Adidas or some clothing brand where you've got all these individual items that you can choose from. The information is being disseminated in exactly the same way.

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Steve I just look at my stack of Cook's Illustrated magazines from ten years ago that I still hold on to. I know my wife loves cooking magazines, and was really distraught when the one that she had subscribed to ceased print publication and went online only. But if you're online only, who knows if that recipe is gonna stay online forever. Your print issue — as long as you hold on to that — it's yours. No one's going to take that away from you.

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Louanne I think all three of us subscribed to Cook's Illustrated. So shout out to Cook's Illustrated. It's something to hang on to. Is it a luxury product like vinyl records, though? I think our Cook's Illustrateds might be, given the fact that all three of us have hung onto them.

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Scott So, Louanne, specifically in your case, if you've got an association, for example, that's teetering, as you've said you have right now, what's your argument to them? What are the stakes that you are going to lay down for them to say this is worth continuing?

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Louanne Well, the first thing I tell them, I go for the cost option. I tell them, “Look, if you're producing six a year now, produce four. If you're producing 24 or 48 pages, cut that in half.” And so we go for that. Although those usually fail because once the higher ups get in their mind that they're going to cut, they cut. We all know about the brand importance of the magazine and how much their members really appreciate having that. I just had a discussion with one of my clients about their magazines — have they thought about having an advertiser sponsor an issue? So they print four times a year and that advertiser gets maybe an advertorial in one. They get premium ad placement — maybe the inside front cover and the back. And then that gives them the opportunity to produce reprints and they can bring them to shows. A lot of times, editors don't want to cater to the needs of advertisers and have stories about the advertisers, because then they're feeding right into that — almost like advertisers are paying them to write a story about them.

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Scott Right, right. It hurts the credibility.

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Louanne Right. We don't want to do that. So as a side note, there's a magazine that I just heard about. It's an association magazine. They'll remain nameless, but they decided, after close to 50 years of being in print, they've decided to cease operation. And they're going to let AI write all of their articles.

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Scott I know exactly who you're talking about. We won't name names.

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Louanne We won't name names.

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Scott Yeah, but as far as designers go, how threatened do you feel by this?

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Steve AI doesn't know how to read the minds of editors. Right? So I feel safe.

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Louanne Wait. We don't know how to read the minds of editors.

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Scott Yeah. Where'd you pick up that skill?

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Louanne Yeah. Share that.

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Steve Each editor is unique, right? And what they're asking for. And you kind of learn how to read them. It's a very collaborative process. So you know when to push back on something. AI is missing the human element. It can't read body language. If you're talking to somebody and they're crossing their arms and they're looking angry and, and saying, “Hold on a minute,” how is AI going to respond to that?

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Louanne And on that note, we're going to end the podcast because AI is a big, big topic, and we're going to return to it in a future podcast.

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Scott But thank you for listening to our discussion about the never-ending death of print.

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Louanne It has not died. It's evolved.