The following news post surfaced on UnBeige last Friday, April 17, and caught my eye tonight: For New York's Adam Moss, Good Things Come in Small Point Sizes. According to the post, New York magazine has started printing really small headlines on its cover. They cite this week's New York Observer, in which John Koblin comments that the type is so tiny, "The letters weigh in somewhere between the size of a grain of sugar and a grain of kosher salt." The cover, seen here, features a red starburst where this tiny type is located. It is currently under a magnifying glass in this picture. One of the reasons for this unique conceptual design, says its editor-in-chief, Adam Moss, is that most of their magazines are sold by subscription - only 4 percent are sold on newsstands - so it allows the magazine, Moss believes, to experiment like this. After the cover line, everything else is considered "garnish," Moss adds. “There’s a certain texturing,” Moss said in an interview with Koblin. “Texturing? Is that a word? A texture object that has to do with the design of the cover. We have very large type and very small type. It’s impossible to describe graphic design, but you want to create a visual tension on the cover. We want you to see a big word that excites you. And then it’s like someone who speaks very softly and you lean in to hear them.” Now I could not see all the tiny type Koblin describes in his article. But it really makes me want to go find this on the newsstand and see for myself. UnBeige claims this is the secret to survive "in the rapidly shrinking world of print media."
Just some food for thought. It's pretty fascinating stuff.
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