Hotcards, Full Color Printing In The Nation

There's a right way, and a wrong way, of posing the question…

At a time when the print industry is supposed to be either fading gracefully or balling up – turtle style – in the hopes of coming out of this recession alive, Fortune Magazine is doing the unthinkable. It's – gasp! – redesigning.

One of Time Inc.'s major newsstand players, Fortune is coming out this month with a whole new look, and we're not talking leaner, meaner, and cheaper. The Fortune redesign involves the addition of relevant new sections, as well as heavier paper stock, and a matte, rather than gloss finish, for the cover. To wit, Fortune has redesigned up, creating a more expensive-to-produce magazine...

In an interview today on AllThingsDigital, Fortune editor Andy Serwer talks about the overhaul with an almost comically skeptical Peter Kafka. Kafka seems unable to prevent himself from asking incredulously after the increase in expense, "could that possibly be correct?" And when Serwer describes the new features, Kafka chokes out, "you think this matters to readers?"

Clearly, as far as AllThingsDigital is concerned, the very idea that anyone still uses ink and paper is a bit crazy. But Serwer remains unflappable throughout the interview. Fortune, he says, boasts hundreds of thousands of readers. The magazine has every reason in the world to keep them happy, and virtually no reason to shy away from digital technology as if it's an unassailable threat.

While Fortune posts duplicate content on its website, and is beginning to cater to portable ereaders, Serwer positions the print magazine firmly at the core of the brand's success. And moreover, he's good-naturedly unsurprised, on camera, by Kafka's shock that a print publication would bother to redesign in this day and age.

However, the truth is that the energy and enthusiasm behind Fortune's redesign is essential to the future of print. Once a publication, a product, a brand, or a technology, stops evolving, that's when the risk of extinction becomes a real possibility.

Currently, the print industry is in a state of flux. Things are changing, but trust a busy printer when that printer says – people are still printing, and still reading print, by the millions! The only way print will truly lose its audience is if it stops evolving and redesigning, something that Fortune and Serwer obviously understand.

But what about you – are you thinking about a redesign, but it seems like a risky time to invest? Let us know your thoughts, right here!