Wednesday, February 6, 2008

A couple of things.

Adweek, the advertising trade magazine that focuses about 80% of its attention on traditional advertising (print and tv) has just redesigned both its print issue and its website. When it comes to redesigns, I use something I call the 11-day rule. Usually people hate the redesign. When the Wall Street Journal was changed there was a chorus of voices swearing they'd never read Murdoch's cheery neo-fascist paper again. Mostly their redesign didn't suck. But people lost familiarity with something they spend more time with than their children and so the were discomfited. But after about 11-days or so, you adjust and accept the redesign. I feel the same way about Adweek's new look. The same phenomenon holds true, I've found, for office moves, devastating hurricanes and other major catastrophes. For 11 days, they're topic A. Then people move on. Would that the Bush/Cheney junta didn't realize this.

Now the second of my couple things: adweek.com has done something very smart. Under each headline they have two clickable buttons. Quick Read and Full Article. Makes sense to me, to give readers the choice to get 50 words of info, or 200. Their choice.

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