Dean's Message
How do you like the new look for our old book?

Dean Paul S. Voakes

I'm going out on a limb here and predicting that by the time you're reading this, you've already noticed a change in the look of Bylines. Here's how it came about.

It's all a matter of practicing what we preach. If we're encouraging our students to get as close as possible to the cutting edge of journalism, we'd better be making the equivalent attempt ourselves, and that includes our alumni communications. So this fall we undertook a makeover of this, our semiannual news mag for alums, and we created a briefer, monthly version that arrives in your e-mail inbox.

In the four-plus years that I've been at the School, Bylines editor Beth Gaeddert has been imploring me to upgrade the magazine to full color, with a new design that might have the look of today's newer magazines. As is my wont, I've worried about the affordability of going to color. (Most of the funding for Bylines comes from the donations of alums and parents.) But in the four years of this hand-wringing, the costs of printing the black-and-white version have risen, while the costs of color printing have actually decreased. The difference between the two is no longer great enough to put a major dent in our publications budget.

As long as we're going to color, we thought, let's spruce up the magazine's look throughout. We called on Mike Campbell, a designer at CU-Boulder's communications service who has helped us design innumerable ads, fliers and brochures over the years. He came back with several options, and what you see is what we chose.

There's a great bonus for our students in this redesign. Beginning in January, we will offer a new course in advanced magazine design. In addition to other course projects, those students will work on upcoming issues of Bylines to hone their design and editing skills.

And that's not all. This fall we launched Bylines Briefly, a monthly, scaled-down update on School news, sent to you via e-mail. Briefly, which is funded by private support from the Chris Bittman ('85) and Kenda Noble Endowment, debuted in October to 3,900 alumni and friends of the School. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive. But we know we don't have current e-mail addresses for all our alums; if you'd like to receive the monthly Bylines Briefly, please write to Beth at Bylines@colorado.edu.                 

So the School news that has always come to you colorfully in the literary sense is now coming to you colorfully in the literal sense – and the digital sense – as well. Hope you like it.
Paul.Voakes@Colorado.edu