Fine wine in a new bottle
Welcome to 2004 and the new look to The Pharmaceutical Journal. No doubt there will be some readers who will hate the design on principle. All readers, however, should be pleased that the text size is bigger than it used to be and, therefore, easier to read by those (including the editor) who are presbyopically challenged.
More seriously, committed readers of any publication — be it The
Spectator, New Scientist or Hello and Loaded — will
continue to read their favoured magazine or journal irrespective of its
look: it
is the contents they are after.This is as true of The Journal as it is
of any other publication — professional
or otherwise. So readers will find all their old favourites, as well
as some innovations, within these pages. Vision for pharmacy (p19), for
example, will be a regular item that will profile pharmacists who have
developed services that match the Government’s view for the future
of the profession. The series starts with a community pharmacist but
we are interested to hear from people in all sectors of the profession
who believe they deserve similar treatment. Network News (the pull-out
centre section) will be less frequent yet offer backing for the Society’s
branch and regional network. We hope members will find it useful and
informative. We will draw attention to other developments when they appear.
But why redesign The Journal, at all, if readers will not be deterred
by the previous version? There are a number of reasons. Journal and magazine
design all move on over time — The Times, for example, only started
carrying news on its front page (as opposed to advertisements) in 1966.
Professional journals may not be at the leading edge in terms of design,
but as all printed and written material is modernised, certain styles
go in and out of fashion; publications that do not change at all start
to look old-fashioned. Committed readers may not mind, but less frequent
visitors to PJ pages will gradually start to wonder whether their effort
is sufficiently rewarded.
An extension of that argument is the need for The Journal to be as attractive
as possible to the younger members of the Society. There is evidence,
admittedly anecdotal, that many pharmacists in their 20s simply look
at the classified advertisements and then throw their copy in the waste
paper basket. Maybe they are too busy establishing themselves in their
careers, or believe that, since they were so recently trained, much of
The Journal is not relevant to them.
When we commissioned the designer Peter Laws to take a fresh look at
The Journal, one of the main criteria was for him to ensure that the
final product would appeal to those nearer the beginning of their careers
than the end. Journal staff and the editorial advisory board are more
than pleased with the result. We hope that you are, too.
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