Serifs

If you have more than a passing familiarity with the Broad world you might have gleaned that I don't, shall we say "cotton" much to change. I tolerate it, I work with it, I handle it, but I never openly embrace it. Perhaps it is my Capricorn nature, or just some holdover glitch from a past life, because it is most certainly an anomaly with my rapid liberal ideology. No matter. I DO NOT LIKE CHANGE.

I am also a somewhat voracious reader—online articles, magazines and/or books. One publication, Rolling Stone (which I have subscribed to since about the dawn of time—or 1987 whichever came first) recently put me through a massive redesign that entailed the dramatic change of their page size. Most everything else stayed the same and I have moved on. Although I adore the new perfect binding, I would trade it for my over-sized, saddle-stitched version of yore any day.

And now it is happening again. I addressed the pending change of Newsweek in this post. Not only did it mark the final time Anna Quindlen would appear on the book's back page, it was the last issue in the weekly periodical's current incarnation. As of tonight I am about half way through the newly released redesigned issue and I am on the fence. So far I think some of the articles are simply too short and the layouts are leaving me cold. I am less than thrilled with the font choice (serifs, meh), the type seems like it is meant for the large print Reader's Digest edition, and the art is doing this wonky full page bleed stuff that just seems to be trying to hard.

But perhaps I shouldn't judge until I have lived with it for a couple of weeks. I am getting old and feeble minded, so I may not even notice the changes by the middle of the summer and just blissfully digest my weekly influx of news information as I have done in the past.

Until then, if you hear me muttering change is good under my breath without much conviction, you will understand why.