The Last Page
Barkan, Joanne
SOME OF us Dissenters agitated year after year for a design overhaul and a new logo for the magazine. So I had high hopes when the revolution began last January, that is, when Michael Walzer,...
...Maybe I'd be better off without a major life change...
...What would this mean politically...
...Suppose we don't like the new logo after ten years...
...just as we argued over the substance of foreign policy, we'd argue over the style of subheads...
...Co-editor Walzer confessed his attachment to the old logo...
...Take, for example, the new logo...
...Eventually Michael worked through his nostalgia...
...Did we simply adopt the one that we all clearly liked...
...I also anticipated conflict...
...Dissent had taught us to delve into nuances and disagree with each other...
...Will they like her...
...JOANNE BARKAN 144 DISSENT / Winter 1998...
...Designer Daniel McClain showed us fifteen alternatives —an ample selection...
...Settling finally on our initial choice, did we charge forward to the next task...
...Sure she's great, but my 'ex' looks pretty good, too...
...We suffered from prenuptial anxiety...
...As soon as Brian spoke, I realized that getting Dissent restyled was like getting married...
...When deciding between subtitles in serif or sans-serif type, we all preferred serif...
...Will they think the logo is too hip, too 'retro,' too bourgeois...
...For reasons of dumb luck (I'm sure it wasn't political), we operated mostly on a single design wavelength...
...The process turned out to be long and bumpy, but not because we clashed over design...
...Even if I love him now, I might get bored later on...
...So what...
...Simone responded...
...And what about the family...
...So I had high hopes when the revolution began last January, that is, when Michael Walzer, Mitchell Cohen, the staff, and I undertook the redesign project...
...To my surprise, our group almost always concurred on aesthetics...
...Who would have guessed that leftists stubbornly dedicated to radical change in the distribution of power and wealth would clutch when asked to commit to a new type face...
...We liked the same table-of-contents layout and spine treatment...
...Still, we had to face the facts: no guarantees in life, no warranties in graphic design...
...We needed a thought, a precept, a maxim to put the whole business back in perspective so we could finish our work...
...Caring deeply about the magazine, we didn't want to undermine it in any way...
...Au contraire...
...we stood poised to move on . . . Then Executive Editor Brian Morton unearthed another concern: "We like the new logo now, but because of its trendiness, it might be quick to grow old...
...Does any other magazine have a similar logo...
...No, we worried: "Suppose there's some other logo, not yet created, that we'd like even better...
...We might agree on the big issues of democracy and freedom, but that didn't mean we'd see eye to eye on type fonts and cover layouts...
...we came to terms with the improbability of unconditional support...
...We had strayed far from design and were struggling in the emotional arena...
...Perhaps we shouldn't do anything rash . . ." Meanwhile, we fretted over the reactions of our editorial board and readers...
...Ludicrous but true: for the first few months, we regularly got cold feet...
...Of all the magazines displayed in the window of his local bookstore, only Dissent with its 1970s mastodon lettering was clearly recognizable from across the street...
...You hated the old one for fifteen...
...When presented with several designs for the Editor's Page, we all had the same first choice...
...Suppose there's someone out there who'd be even better for me...
...I knew our anxiety reflected the strength of our attachment to Dissent...
...We asked to see more options . . . in a variety of sizes, please...
...It came from Business Manager Simone Plastrik...
...The real problem was something else: fear of commitment...
Vol. 45 • January 1998 • No. 1
