While in the Academy (of Visual Arts) we had little respect for anything with only a few exceptions. One of those exceptions was Print magazine, considered to have inspiring and healing powers, even without reading it – touching its cover or sniffing the smell of ink off its pictures was enough.

The guys over at the Graphics Faculty were actively courting the gentle graphic design god and each year one of the assignments for the students was to imagine covers for Print. Many of them were spectacular (or so they seemed to me at that particular age) and I remember Camil doing some beautiful witty ones.

Print Magazine's masthead was something we didn't tattoo on our skin only because as poor students we had a bit of a money problem.

Imagine my dizzying pain when I've got the Jan/Feb 2005 (current) issue in the mail. Whoa, wtf is this, a Russian underground knock-off of my American design magazine? What about the Colors-like cover photo? Why is it so thin? Looks like airport read. Under the new logo I've got this "Design Culture Type" thing! What does it mean? Where is my "America's Graphic Design Magazine", a? Oh, God, have mercy, these people just shattered my youth's sweetest memories.

So Print Magazine was completely redesigned by Pentagram's Abbott Miller with custom Gotham Rounded face by Hoefler & Frere-Jones (the website still uses the old masthead at this time, here is a sample page of the new design).


Words are nice but I still cannot manage to actually see their meaning. I love Gotham – it's overhyped and soon overused, but I like it. But I hate the rounded version and it will take some time to get used to it.

Why am I mad? Because what I see doesn't fit with the values I attached to this brand in my head. Print Magazine was a brand of stature about the reputation of the guild of design. Its layout was about authority and trust, and now I feel like they try to bend and remap these associations to something trendier.

Gotham Rounded, I'll meet you in ten years. I'm glad I didn't get the old masthead tattoo – now I'd be even more furious.