Mr. Magazine

Innovation seems to be the topic of the moment. Bright spots in the midst of all the dark clouds surrounding our industry are starting to surface. One such bright spot is a new magazine that was launched last July: Design Mind. Today the second issue is out. What follows are two clips from the magazine’s press release and an in-depth interview I have conducted with Sam Martin, Design Mind editor-in-chief.

Design Mind in their own words:

“By reading design mind, business leaders and design professionals gain ideas and insights into everything from social innovation and design research to technology news and management techniques,” said Sam Martin, editor-in-chief of design mind. “Following the successful launch of our first print issue, we’ve taken the magazine to a new level, designing it so that our readers can easily engage with frog’s leading thinkers.”

Written by frog designers, technologists, and strategists, design mind articles provide the design and innovation community with perspectives on industry trends, emerging technologies, and global consumer culture. The magazine is published three times per year and features interviews with high-profile thought leaders along with contributions from external writers, designers, and photographers.

My Interview with Sam Martin, Design Mind’s Editor-in-Chief

When the first issue arrived in my office I was stunned by an elegant personalized hand-written note from the editor-in-chief. It was something I have not seen in ages. The handwritten note and the magazine were reason enough for me to get in touch with Mr. Martin and ask him a series of questions. Whose behind Design Mind? What does it offer? Why in print? Is there a future for print? These questions and more were answered by the magazine’s editor-in-chief Sam Martin. I asked Mr. Martin What is Design Mind?

Design Mind publishes articles that comment on the intersection of technology, business, and culture. A lot of what informs this intersection is design, so we sort of look at culture, business, and technology through the lens of design.

This is the product Frog Design, Inc. Can you give us a little background? What is the link between the two?

Yes, there is definitely a link. That is, it is published by Frog Design and is part of the Frog marketing platform. It is a custom publication. However, we are very much looking for a journalistic voice here and some really objective commentary. We consider it a thought leadership effort at picking out trends that are building, looking at the fringe of what is happening in culture and business and where things might be headed. Frog is what we call a global innovation firm. We’re going to have our 40th anniversary as a company next year.

We were started in Germany by a well-known German product designer named Hartmut Esslinger. Hartmut worked for Sony in the seventies. His big break was being hired by Steve Jobs at Apple in the early eighties where he helped design and actually came up with the design language for the Apple 2C computer, which is called the Snow White computer language. It was a big break that came with a lot of attention. That’s when Hartmut and the whole team moved to California.

Over the years, we have taken on a lot more. We get a lot of product design. We also moved into sort of visual design, designing user interfaces in cell phones, web sites, and other kinds of digital software and that sort of thing. After all of this, we’ve now become design consultants, where we give largely global Fortune 500 companies advice on product strategy and that sort of thing. So, Frog is the reason behind the magazine, but it’s also its own brand.

Which brings me to my next question: why a magazine? Are magazines still matter? Does print still matter in your business?

Yes. I think print does matter. I don’t think print is dead, as has been the contention for so many years. I think that this is because print has a longevity that’s not available by digital means. Now, I do think that print is being redefined. We think it’s a good idea because we can target our audience, almost hyper-targeting. We do a small print run at 5000 copies an issue. And we have the ability to partner with other media groups or with conferences like Poptech. We think that the value that it gives our clients as a piece of marketing material is second to none. In fact, there are statistics that show that business executives still read print. It’s almost a 2:1 margin in print versus web reading. While my opinion is that news and print aren’t necessarily compatible, I think print offers much more memorable long term and valuable outlet for information. It’s something you want to keep around. It’s the tactile feel that people really enjoy, and, from a marketing prospective, it’s also a little bit of a surprise. We got a lot of media attention because of it. Why are you doing print? And for us, it’s actually working quite well. It’s doing what we need it to do, which is drumming up some PR. It’s an excellent outlet for the people that work in our company. We have over 400 people worldwide working at Frog, the kind of people that always have great ideas. They’re looking for outlets, and this a great place for them to show their ideas off.

So, what is your publishing model that you are following with Design Mind?

That’s an interesting question. We have to figure out a different way to use print, and I think that might be what you’re getting. The fact that it is significant that this magazine is being published by Frog Design Company, using a marketing budget. I think it speaks to sort of the splintering of news. It’s commensurate with what’s happening with this world. This long tailing of fact where you’ve got lots of small businesses or many voices as opposed to one voice. Because we produced it from the inside looking out, it worked. It wouldn’t work if we did it as if we were talking at people, even overly pushing the fact that it comes from Frog Design or tried to sell our brand. This really is about talking about relevant ideas and exploring trends. It just happens to be sponsored by Frog Design. It works for the reader and the publisher in that regard.

Why themed issues? First it was Numbers, now Motion….

Well, the themes that we choose are largely based around the areas in the industries that we’re playing in, we want to play in, or we want to get involved with. They are very, very loosely interpreted.

On Motion, Frog does a lot of work in the mobile industry. We also do a lot of work in the health care industry. So, we thought motion could encompass both of those things. There is also stuff on the entertainment industry, so we could talk about moving pictures on a very basic level. There’s also going to be an article on ADHD, because children with ADHD are often described as being in perpetual motion. The mobile industry and the movement of digital media and social media is also gonna be part of the next issue. So, we choose the things because we think they’re interesting. They’re focused on the industries that we deal with.

One of the things in the magazine that has received a lot of high accolades is terms of the design in terms of the presentation, and if we look at the name, Design Mind, how do we create a name for a magazine? Where did the name Design Mind come from?

I think a lot goes into a name of a magazine. Design Mind, for us, speaks to our background as designers. That is the reason why we’re in existence. That is the lens through which we look at all of our dealings, so design had to be in the title somewhere. Design Mind really speaks to the fact that we want this to be a thought leadership publication. We wanted to let people know that if you’re reading this magazine, you’re reading our minds. You’re seeing what’s going on behind the scenes. You can have a better understanding of how designers think, and how we are applying design to lots of different problems going on. I think that’s the key. Design has changed so much over the years. What we’re talking about with the magazine is how design can be applied to various problems be they social, how you use a product, how you approach a life situation, how you organize information, how you get to the doctors, how you measure your health, how you watch media or how you connect with other people. Design isn’t just graphic design. It’s not just product design. It’s really kind of a solution-based issue.

What makes Sam Martin tick?

I’m in a unique position here. My background is in journalism. I was an editor at This Old House Magazine for a number of years and before that Mother Earth News. I’ve written a number of nonfiction books, so coming into a company working for a marketing team is a little bit of a change of pace for me. Doing a custom publication has a lot of freedom. Handwriting a note is part of that customization. It’s part of being able to be personal with my audience. I think that is lost sometimes in digital. I think print is very personal because it’s so tactile. It even has a smell to it. I also think that’s very much what this company’s all about. We work with some of the largest companies in the world on many different continents, but we’re small, and we we’re able to give personalized attention to each of our clients. It’s just a culture here, and, for me, it’s important as a writer. You always want to know that you can reach out and influence somebody with your writing and I guess that’s why I sent the handwritten note.

Do you consider yourself a writer or designer or both or can you separate between the two?

I definitely consider myself a writer wearing an editor’s hat right now. Design is something that, I specialized in over the years. I feel very close to the process and being here I’m learning a lot more about it. But I’m a writer first and foremost.

What about the future of print?

I think that this splintering and this hyper-targeting of print products is the future, because I think that’s the only way it can survive. You know the newspaper industry is in such turmoil right now because they just can’t keep up with the news. I think we’re seeing an increase in op-ed style articles. We’re also seeing an increase in trend stories. That’s the only way for print to survive right now. It can’t compete with online news reporting. Print has to become either a thought leadership proposition, or it has to become a deep dive into trends. If you look at successful books like Freakanomics or Malcolm Gladwell’s books, these are books that have picked out trends. They’ve gone past the first couple layers and they’re making connections on the fringes of culture that are not normally made. That’s what innovation is, and, interestingly, Frog is an innovation company. In order for print to innovate, you have to be able to spend time writing your stories. It used to be where reporters would go out and 80% of the time was spent reporting, 20% of the time was spent writing and that’s the way print would work. It would make sense that you would have this hyper-targeted magazines targeting smaller audiences but having many more of them. It’s the long tailing. It’s the same idea behind the long tailing business or the boutiquing of businesses.

So we’ll be doing more digging then?

More digging. Yeah. More searching. There’s too much information. You have to be able to make sense of the information, and you have to be able to draw atypical conclusions. You have to be able to spend more time looking at the information in order to make relevant conclusions.

If somebody asked you and said, Mr. Martin, recommend some magazines for me to actually engage with, benefit from, learn from, imitate, what would those magazines be, besides Design Mind?

I think The New Yorker is still perhaps the best magazine out there right now because of the resources they give to their reporters and the quality of the reporting. Fast Company is one that kind of plays on the same field as Frog does, where they have one foot in design and one foot in business, using that to comment on the culture of those things.

Thank you.

“Innovation is the key and not staying the course,” says Greg Schumann, vice president and group publisher of Bonnier Corp.’s Parenting Group (TPG). That, in fact, sums Schumann’s take on the current status of magazine publishing in general and on Parenting magazine in particular. Parenting magazine is now two magazines serving the needs of two separate groups of moms, where the mantra of “one size fits all” no longer exists.

Schumann’s strategy is not only limited to innovation.

The new strategy isn’t just an innovative way to launch a new publication. By separating the current Parenting (for moms of kids 0-12, 2.15 million circ) into two separate monthly editions – Parenting School Years (for moms of kids in kindergarten through 5th grade, 500,000 circ) and Parenting Early Years (for moms of infants, toddlers and preschoolers, 1.65 million circ), Parenting is offering readers the ability to choose the content that’s most relevant to them, and offering advertisers a new way to customize their marketing messages to target moms with children in different age groups.
This strategy brings to life what TPG has learned from studying the effects of Gen Y moms on the parenting media landscape: Today’s generation of web-savvy moms expect customization – so it’s time to rethink the concept of the “one-size-fits-all” mass parenting magazine in a media universe populated with niche web sites and mommy blogs targeted to every possible subset of moms. The more targeted the content, the better. And the more relevant the magazine is to its readers, the more advertisers’ messages will resonate with their intended audience.

To follow up on this strategy, I asked Mr. Schumann few questions regarding Parenting magazine, The Bonnier Corp. and the magazine industry in general.

What is the secret of your success with Parenting and what is the secret of Bonnier Corp.’s success in the midst of all this doom and gloom?

Well, I think I’ll answer in two-fold. I’ll answer it first on what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. I had lunch with a business consultant in the industry, and we were talking about (the fact that) there’s so much defensiveness going on right now in light of the turbulence that’s being felt economically and certainly in our industry. But I am a believer that difficult or challenging circumstances demand innovation. And that’s the time you should be looking to do things differently and to improve on things versus, let’s ride it out or stay the course.

The rationale behind one magazine with two editions is based in that I am a believer in the research that we did leading up to deciding definitively on our strategy that this approach of one size fits all for moms is no longer working. I would even argue that one size fits all is becoming a challenge to strategy. The needs of moms are so different relative to the stages that they’re in motherhood, relative to the age of their child or children. You just couldn’t think that you are going to be able to properly address their informational needs in one entity.

We’re taking the approach with the business model from a consumer standpoint. We’re serving her more targeted, more relevant information that feels more personalized, more customized, relative to the place she’s in. And also for advertisers, to a point, we are providing the most efficient means to invest their dollars relative to their target, the sub-segment targets of mom. The response we’ve gotten and the feedback have been incredibly positive. It’s been incredibly positive from moms. It’s been incredibly positive from the advertising community.

But in the midst of the doom and gloom, and I know it sounds really cliché and maybe a little holier than thou, but there should be no conditions on doing the right thing for the business. There should be no circumstances that dictate whether you do the right thing or not as far as figuring out constantly how you best serve your consumer and in our case, obviously, moms. So, to me the economy, and the advertising climate shouldn’t weigh into that debate. We have a mission: How do we best serve moms? We think we’ve found the best way to do it with this versioning, targeting strategy. We’re going to do it, whether the economy’s healthy or not healthy. Whether the advertising business is up or down…because it’s the right business decision.

As far as how is Bonnier is doing it, I think this is one of the advantages of being operated by a philosophy that’s looking long term. When Jonas Bonnier acquired our division along with the rest of the other titles that we were sold from Time, Inc., he made it very clear: I am doing it to expand our business, to expand our footprint in the United States, and I’m doing it to have a long term viable, sustainable, growing business. And so, he always talks about the notion of evaluating 20 years from now. The fact that we’re privately held allows, obviously, and helps facilitate being able to take a longer term approach to things. Unlike the industry that seems to live quarter by quarter, as far as how Wall Street goes, earnings and so forth… I do think that in too many instances, in our industry and in American business, we foster just short term thinking. The industry is always trying to get immediate gratification or instant gratification for the business needs, perhaps at the expense of really thinking long term and figuring out what’s the best model looking outward.

I think we’re fortunate to be in a corporation, part of an entity that does look at things long term.

Are we really in such a gloom and doom marketplace today? Is the cup half full or half empty?
The current industry environment too often is viewed as problematic. And I believe it is opportunistic. If you adhere or believe in the notion that within any problem lies an opportunity, I think that without question, that the economic landscape’s changing, our industry landscape’s changing, but anytime there’s change, there’s opportunity. It’s just that too often people tend to look at it as the change is problematic. I think that there is a little too much negativity. Because the country as a whole, and even our industry has been a little bit traumatized by the events in the last twelve month and in particular the last six months.

So do you see light at the end of the tunnel or is it the train coming?
Well, I had an interesting explanation from someone in the financial industry. He said you should look at this situation as though the economy is a giant pan and we’re at the bottom of the pan. But the pan is elongated, meaning it’s not going to get much worse, but it’s not going to be remedied quickly. And so I’m of the school of thought that I think you’re going to be hard pressed to see the economy really turn around, this year.
But, I do adhere to the thinking that the mood, this fear that you talk about, the doom and gloom, that’s the first thing that will go. People are going to start to see the sun again. And then I think that’s going to be the precursor to seeing re-investments and the general dynamic of the economy starting to turn and then people starting to invest more aggressively, but I think that’s probably not going to happen until 2010. So what do you do? I think that everybody has to re-examine their business model. This is the time that everyone should be thinking about innovation. If you look at this situation as an opportunity instead of a problem I think that’s what should be our approach.

Do you rather go on a diet or would you rather have a plan just for you to lose weight? That is the question that the folks at Meredith seem not to find an answer to. Thus they gave their newest Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publication magazine two different names with the exact same content (and what seems to be the IN cover-line these days Yes, You Can!). One edition of the magazine is called Diet 2009 and the other edition is called My Weight Loss. However, neither name of the magazine is to be found anywhere inside the magazine. Even on the table of contents the editors managed to introduce a design element that covered the name of the magazine on the inside cover replica. Clever, very clever indeed!