The Society of Publication Designers held their annual “Pub(lication) Crawl,” a tour of magazine design departments, where students get a chance to meet the designers, see how the departments operate, and learn about the goals of the magazines on October 2nd. The organization promotes editorial design and does a lot of student outreach. Past tours have included magazines such as The New Yorker, Bloomberg Businessweek, Esquire, Martha Stewart Living, More, Sports Illustrated, Travel + Leisure, and HGTV magazine.
The tour this year included 8×8 magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Popular Mechanics, design firm Segal Savad, Time, W mag and Woman’s Day. Split into four groups,the students met with designers and had a behind the scene look at the publications. Three of our Pace students, Leigh Eron, Rebecca Mbanugo, and Brittany Fuller, had the opportunity to visit Entertainment Weekly and Woman’s Day (tour A).
The students had a morning tour of Entertainment Weekly and an afternoon tour of Woman’s Day. On the tour they met both Design Directors, Tim Leong (EW) and Peter Hemmel (Woman’s Day), as well as other staff and team members ranging from photo editors to design/art assistants.
Coming from an interest in book publishing, it was really fascinating to see behind the scenes of the magazine side. I was especially amazed by EW’s weekly turn around and I still can’t get over the test kitchen at Women’s Day!” said Leigh Eron.
“This tour really reinforced my love for magazines and dream to work for one in the near future. It also showed me the other side of a magazine besides editorial content and how harmonious they have to be to create a solid product for readers.”
“While I lean more towards the book side of publishing, ever since taking Professor Baron’s Magazine Production and Design class I’ve become interested in how magazines are created. I admire Entertainment Weekly’s style and rely on their website for television recaps and interviews, so visiting the offices of Entertainment Weekly and gaining insight into the creative process behind each issue was a truly surreal experience for me. Getting to see the various departments at Woman’s Day was also a blast–everyone there was extremely positive and the level of detail that goes into each decision was amazing to witness.“
