This June issue of Fleet Owner launches a redesign that's been in the works for six months. As reader needs and tastes have evolved, the magazine has been through many such graphic makeovers in its 81-year lifetime, but this one is a bit different as Fleet Owner is now far more than a print magazine.
Today, Fleet Owner also encompasses a wide range of information and media services for trucking's executives and managers, including a large web site, daily newsletters, an online news service, video, educational webinars, social media, and data. In redesigning the magazine, which remains at the core of our industry offerings, we recognized that the magazine has to complement our newer digital offerings, not copy them. To that end, we've focused on highlighting the many strengths of print in this new media world — graphic appeal that welcomes readers, easy access to a broad range of material that expands reader knowledge beyond narrow search terms, and an environment that suits deeper coverage and analysis of topics.
The one thing that's remained unchanged is the standard we use to judge everything we do: Will it be useful to people who run truck fleets? No matter what the media or channel of communication, our overriding goal is to help you better manage your fleet, to become an indispensable tool as you follow changing regulations, equipment, markets, business trends and all the other elements that impact success in any fleet operation.
And that goal was behind every decision we made in this current redesign. For over a year, the editorial team talked to our audience about how they used the magazine, where and when they read it, what they liked and disliked about it, what they valued most and least. Given the changing media landscape, we also asked about how they best liked to receive information, about their different uses of print and digital media, and about what made the magazine an appealing resource in their business lives.
Translating those preferences and requirements into graphic terms, we've changed type fonts and spacing to improve readability. The news and product departments have been reorganized to make it easier to navigate those sections, and we've greatly increased the use of photos, especially in the new product areas. Feature stories have a simplified design to make the longer format and deeper analysis more readily accessible, and photos have been rearranged into banks with the same intention. Even the columns have been reworked to quickly highlight the main point being made by our topic experts. Last but certainly not least, we've tried to create an overall package that appeals to the eye as well as the mind.
Much of the credit for delivering on those goals belongs to our art director Dan Zeis, whose hard work, talent and creative inspiration drove this redesign, and to the invaluable support and assistance he received from production editor Elsa Pecoroni and managing editor Brian Straight.
I hope you like the changes and continue to find the magazine a valuable contributor to your career and business. And if you're not already taking full advantage of all the digital products that are also an integral part of Fleet Owner, I invite you to begin exploring that interactive community of truck fleet executives at fleetowner.com or at our Facebook and LinkedIn pages.
