One hundred and fifty years ago, America’s oldest weekly magazine published its first issue. This week, it’s celebrating its milestone anniversary with the launch of a new TheNation.com, a collaborative redesign effort that Blue State Digital is proud to be a part of.
FastCo.Design spoke with Richard Kim, The Nation’s executive editor, and Matt Ipcar, BSD’s executive creative director, on the strategic elements that went into creating a home for the best in progressive journalism and bringing it to a wider audience.
“For a long time, The Nation was a print magazine that also had a website. Since 2010, though, we’ve really grown our online presence to around 90 stories a week, but the site’s design never kept up with that. It looked like an afterthought,” said Kim.
Understanding a nimble and innovative refresh was in order, The Nation approached us for help, and we knew that we wanted to be a part of bringing this storied publication to the next generation of readers.
“The Nation just has so much history behind it. It’s a magazine that started publishing 10 years before Custer’s Last Stand, a publication that reviewed Gone With The Wind the week it was published. Given the alignment between what we stand for and what The Nation does, we jumped at the opportunity to work with them,” said Ipcar.
Read the full article here. The redesign has also been covered in POLITICO Playbook, Talking New Media, AdWeek Fishbowl NY, and Metro NY.
The Twitter-verse agrees that the redesign is a beautiful improvement. Here are some of our favorites:
Stunning redesign for The Nation. Elegant scroll interactions, great use of Mercury, bold, engaging homepage. Congrats @bsd & @thenation!
— Seamus Holman (@seamusmh) July 6, 2015
The new @thenation website is looking damn fine this morning. http://t.co/oy1gwzK5Sb people.
— Sam Blum (@Blumnessmonster) July 6, 2015
What a bday present! @thenation gets a facelift from Obama’s digital design team @BSD http://t.co/6EZDN865lp by @DrCrypt via @FastCoDesign
— SARANKCO (@sarankco) July 6, 2015
150 years of intelligent intensity reborn for digital. Must-read is now also must-look. Reader-supported independent journalism @thenation
— Gareth Fenley (@garethfenley) July 6, 2015
For a more in-depth look at the process and learnings from the site, check out this Medium post from Senior UX Designer Daniel Kalick. We also welcome you to celebrate The Nation Day by reading the FastCo.Design article, checking out Bernie Sanders’ ‘most revealing interview,’ and enjoying your new home for smart, progressive, and bold journalism.