Don’t tell my colleagues at Phoenix Home & Garden down the hall, but I’m not much of a décor guy. Sure, I can eyeball a centerpiece bowl or slinky, plush velvet Sabai sofa and appreciate it and everything, but left to my own devices, those tweedy beige drapes from 1985 would never get replaced.
That being said, I do appreciate the value of a good, vigorous remodel, particularly when it comes to PHOENIX magazine. It had been awhile, so our small but spirited team of three editors and two art directors embarked on a remodleing a project during a lull in publishing this summer. To tear down the beige drapes, if you will.
The upshot: You’ll find a lot of new décor in the September/October issue of PHOENIX, besides the killer Arizona Breweries cover story and fun Fall Drives feature from freelance travel writer Jessica Dunham. A full accounting:
New, open-armed page design courtesy of art director Mirelle Inglefield, who scurried around our magazine departments like a forest critter in Snow White, replacing font packages, opening up photography templates and generally cleaning things up.
“You’ll find a lot of new décor in the September/October issue of PHOENIX, besides the killer Arizona Breweries cover story and fun Fall Drives feature.“
A more aerodynamic front-of-book, with new section concepts like What’s Up, a two-page aperitif to whet your appetite for the issue ahead; and Collections Dept., a decades-spanning gallery of Valley objects that we tend to dig up on our regular pop-culture spelunking expeditions.
An expanded editorial play space for award-winning Raising Arizona columnist Amy Silverman, because we hate having to cut her copy.
Two additional pages devoted to food and beverage coverage in our Eat Beat section, bulking up what we already believe to be the Valley’s finest sanctuary for food worship.
And, finally, our inaugural Top Lawyers list – a peer-selected reader-service section patterned after our best-selling Top Doctors issue. It comes with colorful attorney profiles and helpful explanations of all the legal categories, in case you don’t know what to do with that aviation attorney gift certificate you got for Christmas.
Whew. Told you it was a lot of new stuff. Let us know what you think. It might not be too late to take some of it back to the boutique.
