#creative rodeo

Creative Rodeo was recently asked to complete a redesign of Successful Farming’s specialty publication, Ageless Iron Almanac.

Ageless Iron is published six times a year and is read by people who collect, restore, repair, refurbish, and love old farm equipment—they are the agricultural equivalent of hot rod restorers and motor heads. The content ranges from profiles of recently restored tractors to tips and tricks that guide you through your own restoration. The magazine is intended for serious collectors and casual fans alike.

(Below: Old Ageless Iron cover)

The mandates of the redesign were to update the magazine’s layout into a more current look-and-feel without completely removing past elements found in previous issues, an evolution rather than a revolution. The redesign needed to look “new and different” rather than just “different” to acquire new readers without alienating current subscribers.

(Below: Interior Page from a past issue of Ageless Iron.)

The problem with Ageless Iron was not that of the functionality of the design—everything is legible and easy to navigate and read—but of a disconnect between design and subject matter. The old design has a quasi-Victorian quality without being too blatantly Victorian—or charismatic—and an overall look and feel that is flat and obvious which makes it uninteresting.

(Below: Interior page.)

There are swooshes and cartouches meant to evoke a late eighteenth to early nineteenth century feeling and this feeling is meant to align itself to the period in which tractors first appeared in the agricultural world. While this Victorian style does well to evoke a history—or a historical significance—to the subject matter it lacks a fundamental dynamic: energy. The current layout is missing any real personality (especially given the personalities of the collectors and, as Creative Rodeo would soon witness, the personalities of the tractors).

(Below: Interior department page from an old issue of the magazine.)

The answer then is to evolve the current magazine layout into a design that has historical significance, energy, and personality but still uses elements from the old issues. There are several questions to consider when evolving a visual system: How far can you push the current visuals and not alienate the customer base? What is the customer used to seeing? Did you push it far enough to achieve the goals of the original redesign mandates? Will the customer still recognize the brand?

It’s a razor’s edge as people invest emotionally into brands and products—stray too far and you upset the equilibrium and consumer recognition and connection goes out the window. Don’t think so? The Gap rebrand-debacle of last year proves otherwise (Gap-gate).

While still using elements of past Ageless Iron issues, Creative Rodeo evolved the magazine’s design by updating colors and fonts to feel more current and energetic yet still feel grounded in some sort of historical context. We also created a tighter grid system across the magazine so that empty space, item sizes, and proportions would establish a uniformity across all pages. This uniformity gives the elements (whether they are text blocks, images, or headlines) a visual order that eases the effort put forth by the consumer to absorb the content.

(Below: New cover redesign for Ageless Iron.)

The typeface was updated from a simple serif to Bodega Sans. Bodega came chocked with personality: there’s a machine-friendly-quality to the face, it’s a Deco-born typeface so it is grounded in historical significance relating to the subject matter (fancy way of saying, “It feels historical”), and it has a great amount of personality.

(Below: Redesigned interior page.)

Though the design for Ageless Iron changed, it still retained many of its original elements: the background parchment paper was kept, body copy type remained relatively unchanged, and lines used to separate text blocks and images still do so, etc. 

(Below: Interior page, spread, and department page from the redesigned magazine.)