The May issue of “Water Environment & Technology” magazine is mailing soon with a new design. The magazine’s editors and designers are excited for you to see it. But before it arrives in your mailbox, we want to share some of the details as well as what we hope these changes and additions will provide to you.
During the past few months, our designers and editors have worked to create a new and fresher look for the magazine. Magazines typically get this sort of overhaul every 5 to 10 years; Water Environment & Technology's last major change was in September 2010.
‘Operations & Engineering’
Water Environment & Technology has included a focus on operations and operators for nearly 20 years. But with this redesign, we wanted to reinforce that commitment, so we added a tagline: Operations & Engineering. When these two segments of the water sector collaborate effectively, everyone — designers, operators, management, customers, and the environment — sees the benefits. We feel that your magazine should reflect this throughout, beginning on the cover.
Signposts and Connections
On a more practical level, we also wanted to make your reading experience easy. This also starts on the cover: We added page numbers to point you right to the content you want. (Sometimes, the simplest changes can do the trick.)
Next, we added navigation markers at the top of nearly every page to let you know where you are at a glance. These markers are ideal for those of you who skip the page numbers and prefer to flip through. The number of markers tells you how many pages are in an article and the coloring indicates which page you’re currently on. Some articles also have descriptive watchwords next to these navigation marks to indicate the topic of the article on that page.
For Table of Contents readers, we’ve built in several things to help you choose among the articles. Most prominent of these elements are the subject tags that provide some information beyond the title and subtitle of selected articles. You can quickly spot that Collection Systems or Disinfection article you need.
Steve Spicer is director of content creation at the Water Environment Federation. For the last 18 years, Steve has worked on Water Environment & Technology magazine as well as most of the other WEF periodicals. During this tenure, he has spent time in nearly every editorial role and also holds the title of Editor in Chief with oversight of all day-to-day operations of the editorial team and interaction with the magazine’s designers.