Timoni West is a web designer in San Francisco.
This is her blog.

On the Atlantic Rebranding

New Work: The Atlantic, from Pentagram

My coworkers and I spent some time yesterday talking about this redesign. Nobody liked it, and even though I’m often underwhelmed by Pentagram’s rebrandings, the ketchup-and-mustard sample cover was so scattered and cluttered as to be a Wolff Olins-sized disaster. What, I wondered, was Pentagram thinking? They have some of the top designers in the world; how could they sign off on that? In fact how did anybody come up with it in the first place? But then I saw these initial concepts. I love them. They’re bold, polished, and unabashedly stylish, all the qualities the final product lacks. Visually, they made perfect sense, which starkly illustrates the quality of the initial design offerings versus the final product. It’s clear Pentagram must have been dealing with a huge amount of client interference. You can see hints of both concepts in the final design: the left column is sort of a relic from the Believer/Harper’s hybrid, and the big headline list is just a dumbed-down version of the Swiss International option. Even the typefaces the Atlantic chose are compromises on the stronger initial offerings; both Titling Gothic and Mercury Text are modern, watery options designed to be ignored. It’s true that some of the interior layouts in the new design are bold and interesting, but it’s clear that, overall, the Atlantic missed out. At least Pentagram gets the satisfaction of seeing their concepts applauded in the blogosphere. (My personal favorite is the Believer/Harper’s hybrid, though most people, unsurprisingly, like the modernist Swiss Universal style.)

—Timoni