Design Issues

358 issues since she first helped produce The Chemical Engineer magazine, Alex Revell recounts just how much things have changed during her time working on it, behind the scenes and on the page

THE YEAR was 1997. New Labour were in power, Diana, Princess of Wales had just died, Google.com was a newly registered domain and, much to my delight, my name appeared on the masthead of a magazine for the first time. It had been a long-held ambition to work in magazines and, although advertising production assistant on The Chemical Engineer was not quite what I had imagined, as a fresh-faced publishing graduate going into her second “proper” job I felt I finally was getting somewhere.

An unbelievable 27 years later here I still am, though these days I am responsible for the magazine’s design and layout and manage its production and distribution. I often feel that the magazine is like one of my children: I have seen it grow and evolve over the years and I’m proud of what it has become.

People and processes

Things were rather different then. With the internet (and IChemE’s website) in its infancy, the magazine was an even more important way to communicate news, events, and technical insight to the IChemE community. As a result, it was published every two weeks. It contained fewer pages than it does now, was less feature-based, and at least a third was advertising. The much larger team consisted of the editor, a news editor, two assistant editors, an editorial secretary, a production manager, a graphic designer (soon after there were two), three advertising sales representatives and me. In the days before the rapid decline in printed job ads and the advent of digital prepress, (the preparation of artwork for the printers) the advertising production role was still a full-time job.

Over the years I have seen many changes to the team and the magazine. Roles have evolved and people have moved on: I have worked with six editors and numerous journalists, designers, and production staff. Advertising sales is no longer in-house, while the editorial advisory board has been replaced by the reader feedback panel. The magazine has changed its name (to tce, and back again) and its format, frequency, pagination, and look has fluctuated over the years. We have experimented with supplements, an app, a podcast, and various iterations of a website as we try to play to the strengths of both print and digital realms. But through it all there has always been the same desire to create quality, curated, trustworthy content for our readers.

I joined IChemE at a time of great technological change. Desktop publishing was still in its infancy, and a revolution in not only print production but the way we access information was underway

Vintage technology

I joined IChemE at a time of great technological change. Desktop publishing was still in its infancy, and a revolution in not only print production but the way we access information was underway. Some of the technology in our 1990s office is now the stuff of museums. We had a dot matrix printer for printing out the addresses from reader enquiry cards to send to advertisers. There was a cathode ray tube TV for the journalists, as collating news consisted of scanning through the day’s newspapers and keeping an eye on Teletext for breaking stories. It was the days of shorthand, notebooks, and dictaphones with little cassette tapes. Two fax machines whirred in the corner, churning out company press releases and sending proofs to advertisers. I shared a PC for admin purposes and an Apple Mac for design work. Staff email addresses hadn’t been around long, and I spent a lot of time on the phone, keying in classified and recruitment adverts dictated to me by advertisers.

At the beginning of my time at IChemE much of the production process was still rather analogue. On deadline day we would drive to the “repro house” with ads on pieces of colour-separated film, mono ads on bromide paper, marked-up photos and zip disks full of pages as Quark files (one of the original desktop publishing programs). The repro house would then create camera-ready artwork. This was used to create film for the printers, which was then used to make the plates ready for the printing process. This stage no longer exists: the artwork is printed directly to the plates (see How TCE is made: Printing on p53).

The advent of the pdf file in combination with rapid advancements in creative programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign and the rise of the internet was truly a turning point in the digital transformation of print. Before long, we no longer needed the services of a repro house, as we supplied print-ready pdfs directly to our printers. We would send files overnight by ISDN (a way of transmitting large data files through the telephone network). Now, we upload artwork for the whole magazine to the cloud in seconds!

Another significant change has been in the imagery we use: a very important part of any magazine. When I first began designing the editorial we were restricted to a library of images on CD, occasional image purchases and a lot of begging to use corporate media photos. We also had to improvise – the very first issue I worked on had a photo of a colleague’s baby on the front cover to accompany a story about absorbent polymers in nappies. Later, I remember us mocking up a “millennium bug” alarm clock and photographing it. Gaining access to an image library subscription opened up a whole new world. Online image libraries have grown and grown, to the point where there are literally millions of pictures at our disposal (it can still be a struggle finding more specific chemical engineering images though!). And, of course, there has been the perennial problem of how to portray engineers without relying on hardhats…

Monthly magic

In 2001, the magazine had its biggest overhaul for over a decade. By that time, I had moved to designing all the editorial pages and have done so ever since. Prompted by the huge changes reshaping the communications environment at the time, and the way that people accessed their news, it was heralded as a reinvention of IChemE’s flagship title. The magazine moved to a chunkier, monthly publication with a new-look glossy cover, perfect binding and a brighter, bolder feel. The production manager at the time handled the magazine redesign, from the new logo (to mark the change, the magazine became tce) to new templates for every single page. The editor vowed to inform, entertain, and provoke debate with deeper analysis of world news, themed features, in-depth technical content and broader topics including university and student issues. The fresh, modern-style magazine was greeted enthusiastically, although some members were quite cross at the reduction of our name to an acronym!

Over the next seven years I had three spells of maternity leave, but always returned to my tce family. The team became some of my best friends as we tackled the deadline stresses and bottlenecks with humour, occasional deadline-day sweariness and junk food. There have been many late nights and birthdays worked (mine always seems to be on deadline week) but we have never missed a deadline. There have also been many desperate searches for appropriate ways to illustrate topics I don’t really understand, and always a hunt for an eyecatching cover for sometimes obscure subjects. These have included a number of “Photoshop challenges” such as mocked-up tattoos, adding words to gold bars and safe dials, wind turbines on eyeballs, hardhats on statues, a process plant lifting weights, molecules on fish scales, factories on a smart watch, zombie engineers, mazes from pipes, and process plants being microwaved. Several years ago, one challenge did unfortunately prove too much for me. A cover about spray-on dresses featured some particularly pertinent nipples that were deemed in need of being “toned down”. I just couldn’t make them look natural and had to ask a colleague to lend a little Photoshop expertise. The phrase “Mike could you give me a hand with these nipples?” was an office joke for years after.

Aside from the imagery I take great pleasure in sometimes coming up with the cover words, and often captions too (generally comedic ones, swiftly removed), but writing this piece has certainly been a first.

All change

Working as a magazine designer involves keeping the layout style consistent and appealing, re-evaluating the fonts, colours and those little touches that make the editorial cohesive visually. In 2005 I refreshed the look with a new cover and simpler page style and in 2010 tweaked it again with a slightly different cover and fonts. In 2015 I was tasked with my biggest challenge yet – a complete revamp of the whole look of the magazine, right down to the logo, as it had been decided the name should change back to The Chemical Engineer in full. I had free rein and the sheer number of options was daunting, but after so many years I felt I knew my market.

Time was limited with my punishing deadline cycle (which also includes laying out the Loss Prevention Bulletin), so in the summer when we had a combined issue and a slightly longer break, I holed myself away in a meeting room with my laptop, books on design grids for editorial and a lot of internet research. I agonised over fonts, font size, leading (the space between lines) and all those little details: subheads, headings, author information, picture credits, column size, margins, gutters (the space between columns) and so on. I surrounded myself with printouts on the walls like an obsessive detective on a TV show, until little by little I narrowed it down to styles and templates we were all happy with. I was really proud when the new look received positive feedback from our readers, and since then have kept it fresh with minor tweaks like matching the subheading font to the IChemE font, and a new colour palette.

The magazine has also changed format, the perfect binding and glossy coated cover giving way to cheaper, more sustainable options as the decline in print advertising revenue hit. Environmental and cost concerns have prompted regular reassessing of the paper the magazine is printed on and the way we mail it. Our most recent change was the introduction of a paper wrap, replacing the bioplastic bag, which in turn had replaced a poly (plastic) bag. Although the bioplastic we previously used was made from potato starch and compostable, it needed very specific conditions to break down, whereas paper is fully recyclable.

The future of TCE

In an era of growing misinformation and AI-generated content, magazines like The Chemical Engineer with its well-researched, fact-checked, ethical content stand out. Its future will perhaps include more of an integration of text, video, audio, and interactive elements – a multimedia approach – to enhance storytelling and provide a richer experience for the readers.

But for now, as a mostly print designer, I take pride in creating something tangible. There’s something special about the way we interact with print that sets it apart from digital media, scrolling socials, or browsing the net. It’s tactile and immersive, and we give it more focus and attention. In fact, studies have shown that readers recall print better than digital. I still get a sense of satisfaction when I see the final printed product. It’s a rewarding feeling to know that I played a part in creating something that will hopefully interest and inspire readers. I try to make technical subjects look appealing and engaging and convey complex information in attractive ways.

For me, working on The Chemical Engineer is not just about creating something visually engaging, it’s about creating a positive experience for the reader. And that’s what I strive for with all the work I do. Here’s to the next 27 years!