Making of MM Magazine

Doris Oberneder completed her education at the graphics HTL in Linz. After a brief insight into the advertising industry, she decided to specialize in editorial design. Her career took her to the daily newspaper Die Presse in Vienna, the Berliner Zeitung and KircherBurkhardt Berlin, among others, when the agency was still a start-up under the name MediaGroup Berlin. Doris Oberneder has lived in Zurich since 2003. Here she proved her worth during the redesign phase of the Observer. For the past year, Doris Oberneder has been in charge of the layout of the German edition of Migros magazine and is responsible for the redesign.
 
Pablo Tys studied illustration, advertising and photography at the Academy of Arts in Anvers, Belgium. He started as a photographer for the police magazine "info-revue" and later did a first redesign there as a layouter. Subsequently he worked for the biggest newspaper het Laatste nieuws in Belgium and became art director of Gondola magazine. Since last summer, Pablo Tys has been working for Migros magazine.

WW: What considerations led to the commissioning of a redesign?
Doris Oberneder: The last redesign was five years ago. But that was more of a facelift. In the meantime, it has been realized: The layout is already a bit wild. The shapes are no longer very clear. They don't allow for much variety.
Pablo Tys: In surveys conducted regularly by the publisher, the content was always rated very positively, but the layout was mostly criticized. It was perceived as not very modern. The reader guidance and the magazine structure were also a recurring theme among readers.
Oberneder: Even for me, the booklet was very confusing. Some of the divisions were not comprehensible from the reader's point of view. Now there are three fixed, clearly defined sections. We also wanted to support these with a clear color scheme. Each part has been given its own color.
 
So was it primarily about the design? How was the editorial team involved? Oberneder: No, it was about design and content. Every rubric was put up for discussion. Some content has been reconsidered and sharpened, and at the same time new ideas for rubrics have been introduced. Each department formed working groups to collect and evaluate ideas. The "Life" section in particular has been revised once again with a strong focus on advice.
Tys: With a thorough redesign, the content must also be reconsidered. The stories should be shorter and more concise. The French and German editions are also to be brought more into line with each other visually.
Oberneder: I think there should still be longer stories. The rhythm of the magazine is important to me. Short stories should be really short, but longer stories can be long. We want to cater to different reading habits.
 
What did you start with?
Oberneder: Various discussion rounds have been organized with representatives from the editorial office, the publishing house and the journalistic committee. For me, these workshops mainly served to find out how closely we have to follow Migros' CD guidelines. To what extent is Migros Magazine a corporate publishing product, or how independent does it remain? Journalistic independence will be kept very high, but we will draw more from the diverse areas of Migros and consult our internal specialists, for example from the health sector. The consulting section in particular will benefit from this.
 
How closely did you have to align your visuals with Migros?
Oberneder: In the first workshop, I already brought examples of what a magazine could look like that was oriented to the CD guidelines. I quickly realized that with the two cuts of Helvetica that would have been available to us, little tension would be possible in the magazine. Then I tried out shapes: How many additional cuts would I need in order to do better justice to the journalistic content and to be able to differentiate between them?
 
What does cut mean?
Oberneder: These are typefaces, for example Helvetica Regular and Helvetica Bold. Here, the unanimous opinion emerged in the workshops: We don't have to stick to the CD fonts. We can think from the magazine and also use completely different fonts.
Tys: This was already a first positive concession for a great freedom in design.
Oberneder: The title was also discussed: Do we stick with "Migros Magazine" or do we go back in tradition and call it "We," for example, to emphasize its independence. Just as "Brückenbauer" also had an independent title.
Tys: We have moved away from that. We're sticking with the "Migros Magazine. But we're leaving out the bar on the cover, which restricts us too much in terms of design.
 
What happened next?
Oberneder: We asked the editors-in-chief to do a full briefing. We didn't want to get started until the briefing was really watertight and all open questions had been discussed. What does younger mean? What does fresher mean? If you want to be young and modern, you could theoretically do an online magazine right away.
Tys: It was decided that the Migros magazine will remain a classic print product, but will be supplemented even more by online content. The print product should increasingly refer to additional offers on the Internet.
Oberneder: When we had the key data together, we withdrew for two weeks and really worked exclusively for this project. During this time, we were relieved for the other tasks. We have a super team in the layout. It worked absolutely reliably and great how people helped take over our roles during our time off. In some cases, we supplemented the team with freelancers.
Tys: We imposed a fixed structure on ourselves because we knew: two weeks is very tight for a redesign. Every day we set and reviewed a milestone, always with the main messages of the briefing in mind.
Oberneder: Our goal was to have a finished booklet on the table at the end.
 
Did you manage to do that?
Oberneder: I had already prepared our two-week retreat at home. We worked with Sky Fonts, a kind of rental option for testing out fonts. There we could draw from the full range. I had already printed out variants for the start of the workshop. That way, we could discuss these designs and develop them further. On the third day, we wanted to have decided on one or more fonts. Our CD Bruno Boll was there to advise us and encouraged us to be brave, but gave us a free hand.
 
Was it always clear that the new design would be done internally?
Oberneder: That was always clear. That's why I was hired a year ago. We knew then that the magazine was about to embark on a major redesign and that I already had experience in this area. The fact that Pablo Tys then joined our team in August was a great stroke of luck. Fresh, open and curious, he was just the right sparring partner.
Tys: We both have international experience and try to think outside the box. Doris Oberneder has already designed several publications in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. I myself come from Belgium. Doris and I harmonized immediately and complemented each other very well in the design.
 
What is visibly new now?
Oberneder: What is certainly new is the color scheme. We have deliberately opted for pure colors. Although it is called "Migros Magazine," it is produced using newsprint in rotary printing due to the large print run. Because the paper is highly absorbent and newsprint has a relatively coarse screen and large color gain, we decided to use as pure colors as possible. Each section gets its own color: the people section a pure cyan, the Migros section of course the Migros orange and the back section became green. In addition, we use a continuous signal color, a pure yellow, as a play option. Yellow has the advantage that it goes well with the other colors, blends in well despite its signal character, and can be labeled with black.
Tys: Another important design element is the frame.
Oberneder: The Coop newspaper has also recently been redesigned. There, the print margin, which cannot be printed in newspaper printing for technical reasons, is cut away at the end, so that it is borderless. We prefer to stay with the larger format and even emphasize the print area with a frame. The frame has something solemn about it, just as you would frame a picture to give it more meaning. Also, from a design perspective, it's a nice option to work with white space.
 
What's new with the cover?
Oberneder: There's a separate image strategy. Olivier Paky, the head of picture editing, has created a new picture concept. The images are to become more lively and attract the reader's attention. Of course, this applies not only to the cover, but also to the inside pages. From the layout side, we support the image effect by using a larger proportion of images.
 
What did you fight for the most?
Tys: We didn't have to fight at all, but were very much supported both in the editorial and publishing departments and by our Migros colleagues. What I would have fought for, however, if it had been necessary, is color.
Oberneder: We were also concerned that the journalistic forms should be better recognized. In this respect, we also found open ears in the editorial department. A recipe is now simply a recipe. We don't have to depict another celebrity. We wanted to get more down to earth, reduce it to what it is, and make great recipe photos for it. These recipes now also correspond with the product of the week, which is featured on the small-format page in the Migros bundle. The content goes more together. In part, this requires closer collaboration between the various departments and between editorial and layout.
 
But the editorial team had no say in these two weeks?
Oberneder: We wanted to prevent the editorial team from restricting us in the creative process. We had already received a lot of input beforehand, and I didn't know how I was supposed to do justice to all the requests. That's why we stopped or controlled the input. The editors-in-chief Hans Schneeberger and Steve Gaspoz received the results of the group workshops from the departments, checked them and incorporated them into the briefing. Only the final result was presented again for discussion.
 
How has the result been received?
Oberneder: Very positive. After the first issue we were able to present after the retreat, all possible forms had to be implemented and a first zero number printed. This was then submitted to the various committees of the MGB. Not many changes had to be made from the initial draft to the final result.
 
Will production now be more complicated?
Oberneder: It's getting a little more complex, but we're also working differently now. We work more with library elements. Every element and every page is mapped in the library and can be retrieved there.
Tys: But if you want or have to design freely, then it probably becomes more elaborate. We work with different columns, which is also new, and the white spaces must have a certain coherence and be coherent.
 
And then?
Oberneder: We are currently in the process of creating the manual and optimizing the processes somewhat. The high quality standards must now be maintained in everyday life. This can be quite demanding at times. The writers and designers alike have to internalize the new design concepts and stick to them. It would be a shame if the new design were soon watered down again. And finally, there are the extras, our monothematic editorial supplements.

Interview: Andreas Panzeri