We love it when a redesign hits the mark! Our July 2021 “American Made” issue of RV News won FOLIO’s best of > Full Issue > B2B > Retail / Manufacturing / Supply Chain.
It feels like a watershed for the power of putting the “design comes first” mentality away, and focusing on the vision of a publisher. Dana Nelsen, from DRN Media, reached out to us in 2020 looking to showcase his unique perspective on storytelling in the B2B space of the RV Industry. Skeptical at first, we worked diligently to completely revamp the design, type, grid, way finding, and templates to facilitate readability. Strict control of fonts, colors, and pacing allowed us to liberate the pages from excessive decoration, and focus on honest imagery and nuts-and-bolts visual storytelling. Thanks to Dana Nelsen, Donald Schumann, Chris Freeman, and the many awesome writers and photographers who’ve helped us realize this vision.
Monthly B2B publication for RV industry decision makers who need reliable information on important companies, people and products. Their coverage is people-centric and has technical information and insights that interests related RV Industry businesses nationwide.
INITIAL BUDGET: $25,000 TIMELINE: 4 MONTHS
IN HOUSE DESIGNER TRAINING: $15,000
Now that we are quickly approach ing the summer months, I hope business is robust and you and your fellow employees are healthy and happy.
We here at RV News have been extremely busy on new projects to help all of our readers stay informed, be successful and profitable. This issue is a result of some of that work. Hopefully, now that you are on this page of the magazine, you’ve already noticed something is amiss with what you are seeing as you flip through the pages. Our logo and the entire front cover look different. You may have noticed our editor’s letter and Table of Contents have been updated.
As you continue reading, this RV News magazine may seem a little unfa miliar. We’ve revamped everything.
As the oldest magazine in the RV industry, I am very conscientious of our history and the legacy the RV News brand possesses. RV News magazine has been published and has served the RV industry longer than any other business information source, by a large margin. It has been in the industry longer than most people currently working in the industry. That’s saying something.
One of the issues we faced with our redesign was the magazine looked like the oldest publication in the industry. We set about fixing that and we’ve been working on what you see in this issue for nearly a year.
We had several goals as we sought to capture a new look that goes far beyond mere aesthetics. Our goals included:
• Give the magazine a contemporary look that was attractive, fun to read, bold and distinct.
• Display and provide RV business information in a more concise format that highlights the most important information in a way that is uncluttered.
• Thoughtfully revamp how photos appear, where they appear and what photos belong between our pages. A big push was to transform the people and make them appear so they are not merely in the magazine but come out of the magazine into reader’s lives.
• More specifically, focus on the people our stories are about… We only write about business heroes that define greatness or that are doing great things. By knowing the people, what they do and why they do it, the stories create businessto-business opportunities for our readers.
• Make the magazine live up to our tagline by the way it looks: The Voice of the RV industry… by making pull-out quotes stand out. They are not our quotes. They are the people of the industry, what they have to say in their voice.
• Celebrate our advertisers and their messages by carefully controlling how our editorial content enhances the advertiser’s messages. There is an “art” to creating strong, useful and compelling advertising. We wanted to treat advertisements as the art they are.
While we may make some other small tweaks to the new look in the coming months, based on feedback from our readers and advertising partners, we hope this first effort is the first step on a path that provides a business-to-business trade magazine that our amazing readers deserve.
Feedback on what we’ve done here is critical to our ability to give you in formation on what you want and how you want it. I love critical feedback because it challenges you to strive for excellence and be better. I humbly request that our readers write me and tell me what you like and dislike about the new look. You can reach me at dana@rvnews.com or 720-353-4003, ext. 7889.
Finally, I’d like to thank a couple of people who served as an advisory board for this project. They wanted to remain anonymous so I’ll try to do this in a way that doesn’t reveal their iden tity by just using their initials. Thank you: CS, TM, JS, PA, DS and JN.
I look forward to hearing feedback, Dana Nelsen President
