Advertising Age
We ran this up the flagpole and Ad Age saluted.
Happy Cog’s redesign of Advertising Age, the leading journal of the advertising profession, brought the magazine’s website up to date and into line with modern best practices. While bringing crispness, consistency, and predictability to navigation and layout (including ad sizes) we introduced variable homepage template formatting, to grant online editors and art directors the same kind of flexibility their print-side colleagues enjoy.
Along with a complete visual overhaul, the redesign included a restructuring and repositioning. In the past, the print magazine was Advertising Age and the website was, well, a website. But with this redesign, the full editorial experience of Advertising Age comes to the web. In a welcome message, the magazine’s Scott Donaton writes:
For the first time ever, the full contents of the current issue of Advertising Age will be available online for subscribers on Sunday night, the day before the print edition hits newsstands and in-boxes.
Publishing is changing, advertising is changing, where people get their news is changing, and how publications earn their keep is changing. The journalistic enterprise is no longer one-sided: magazines, while remaining authoritative, must also listen to their readers’ voices — and readers want to know what other readers have to say. On top of all that, there were tough decisions to be made about free versus paid content. We advised on all these issues.
Happy Cog worked closely and intensely with Advertising Age to solve architectural, design, and usability challenges, and to introduce modern, expected reader-empowerment features (such as commenting) without violating the sense of control that is important to old-school readers and the editorial board alike.
Responsibilities
Research and consulting, information architecture, brand design, graphic design, user interface design, CSS/XHTML template development. Launched 9 April 2006.