An unfamiliar magazine landed on my desk the other day, and it was coloured like candy. My first instinct was suspected plagiarism, because my dad’s old Dylan poster was on the cover. I was angry for appoximately 9 seconds before I realized it was a tribute to the artist, Milton Glaser. Then for 3 seconds mourned that the lack of PAC-MAN type (PAC-MAN is the real plagiarist, people) because the whole thing reminded me of my parent’s illegal basement apartment and it was awesome. Designed by Switch Studio (was going to say my alma mater, but I looked it up and that creepily means “nourishing mother” in latin, so I’ll just say I worked there awhile), the next surprise was that this “new”mag used to be called Southwest Graphics. That explains why we didn’t get the last issue. It’s now called Process magazine, and it was informing me of an AIGA Summer Film Series showing Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight.
I have to say it’s a vast visual improvement, which made me want to read some articles. I used to flip through SWG, with the dirty word trade publication in mind, stopping only on the submissions by local firms to see what they were up to, and checking out who prints their work. PhxAdBlog‘s own Mark Dudlik is featured as well, the one behind Phx Design Week. And cheers to banishing the “handwritten” crayon ‘GRAPHICS’ font, mostly. Overall, improved and worth a look. The unfortunate thing is that the website is not yet launched, so all the traffic being driven to http://www.processmag.com/ by it’s inaugural redesign, is met with ‘coming soon.’
We were psyched to be able to promote the Milton Glaser Documentary on the cover of Process. The mission of the magazine is to reach people who are involved in the acts of creating, marketing, promoting, and producing ideas – what better poster child than Milton?
AIGA Arizona hosted the documentary in both Phoenix and Tucson and thanks in part to Process getting the word out, it is now on it’s way to other chapters as well.
SW Graphics Magazine had been around for over 17 years but it lacked the penetration needed to cover the current state of the communications industry. So, when Switch Studio was asked to take over the creative direction and redesign, we took the opportunity to go top-to-bottom. We had to ask the hard questions and rethink not only the way it was reaching it’s audience, but what was relevant to them once it got there.
What we concluded with was Process. The printing process, the creative process, the marketing process, etc… it all works together beautifully.
Runbeck Graphics, the parent company of Process, also produces the Southwest Graphics Buyers Guide. This guide is online at http://www.southwestgraphics.net and because of the complexity and content it will take longer to switch over than the magazine. But it’s coming!
So with any luck, by the time the next issue hits the streets, we’ll have processmag.com alive and kicking, media-rich and ready to connect the creative dots, so to speak!
Russ, I think Jim wants you to replace my article with his, feel free : ) The best thing about the new mag is that it’s now geared towards creatives, not printers. Now the advertising is hitting a broader spectrum of people, and focusing on the ones making print & paper choices.
What a nice change! For years I wondered why printers were adverstising to each other it was like a “yeah well look what we can do” one upmans ship contest! Now creatives have a venue to speak through that is well written and organized. Nice job!