Now there’s a cover style we were happy to see changed

Re:Design

Ah crap,” I hear you say. “They’ve changed the bloody paper again.” (For some reason, you all sound like Scottish plumbers in my mind.) Yep, we did. Surprise.

Welcome to our latest look. It’s what we generally call a “soft redesign,” wherein we keep certain key elements of style (mostly fonts), make a few content changes (lose the table of contents, change some columns) and then put on a blindfold and throw darts at the big redesign-idea board we keep hidden on the roof (that’s actually how we choose each new Calendar style).

But unless we had decided to shift to an all-Norwegian scratch-’n’-sniff edition, a redesign is no big deal—like most newspapers and magazines, we do it every few years; and since, as an alt-weekly, we’re technically the naughty offspring of both, that means we get to do it more often than either of our media parents. Think of it like painting your living room (unless you live in a doorway, then just think of it as a different doorway): sometimes you find it hard to believe you actually chose that colour (or that doorway). And it’s not that we hated our last colour, it was just time for a change.

Besides, given some of the new recessionista slogans we’ve adopted here at Monday HQ of late—“random is the new normal,” “texting is the new media” and, our current fave, “small is the new big” (you know that one: just check your bank balance)—tweaking our layout has provided us with a wonderful opportunity to remind everybody that we’re not going out of business, and that our ad-sale phone lines are now open and waiting for your calls. Really.

A quick flip through the dusty and utterly non-digital big bound books in the Monday archives reveals a design change every few years: the white-on-black-and-grey minimalism of earlier this decade, the quirky cartoon icons of the ’90s (“the Nose” remains my personal fave), the heady “Hey, let’s start the story on the cover” days of the ’80s, the shifting logos of the late ’70s . . . here at Monday, it seems nothing is permanent but change. And Doonesbury. And Georgia Nicols. And the crossword. And the Calendar—oops, skip that last one.

What’s new? Visual elements aside, “Curious Times” will now be rotating once a month, trading weeks with the long-running “Last Word,” our new spirituality column (“City Spirit”) and a little something sexy (sorry—or hurrah, depending on your opinion—it’s not the return of Ringo Wilde). Our promo queen, Rachel Greene, is our new go-to gal-on-the-street; she’ll be serving up quick hits of people and places citywide. Cafes and eateries that feature music can now be found under “Dinner Music” on our food page, and we’ll be running a new splash page, “Citysomething,” each issue.

The most noticeable change, of course, is the Calendar—but don’t panic, it’s not that bad. All we’ve done is split it by section: arts listings (stage, readings, galleries) in the arts section, music listings (gigs, concerts) in the music section, with the actual Calendar being made up of everything else (events, outdoors, dances, community, spiritual). It’s like our film and food pages, which have always had listings mixed with articles; we’ve just applied that paper-wide now, like most alt-weeklies.

But let’s not kid ourselves; times are tough and hard decisions have to be made, which means smaller papers, less room for as many articles and more selective coverage. (Yes, it frustrates us too.) Hey, we’d love to be 48 pages—or more—but, as a free paper, that’s not really up to us. And while we did actually consider attaching a cover price based on our upcoming anniversary, we figured $34 an issue was a little too steep. So welcome to the new Monday, which is the same as the old Monday . . . just, uh, newer. M