PragmaGraphic

When I was a kid, my parents always had Time Magazine around the house. I’ve always liked Time, and I feel that its clear and accessible presentation of information (including big, bold headlines, smartly written subtitles, and information graphics by Nigel Holmes) influenced me to become a graphic designer.

Time (the printed magazine, as opposed to their web presence) recently went under a bit of a facelift, which they noted within their pages. They publicly featured their editorial graphic design team, along with (I believe) designers from Pentagram that worked on the magazine’s redesign, which I found gratifying — it’s always nice to see graphic designers get some public props.

While I generally like what’s been done to evolve the look of Time, I’ve noticed some kerning problems, in the small-size Franklin Gothic captions throughout the magazine. I’d be willing to bet that this is due to some font-substitution or other font-file-related problem somewhere in the magazine’s workflow. The lack of attention to detail here (for me, at least) sullies what is otherwise a clean, clear layout. I hope the design and production team at Time is able to remedy this situation soon, so they can continue to set a good example for today’s budding designers, like they did for me years ago.