Last October, a team of us who work on Previews sat down with stacks of magazines from all walks of life, including publications from other museums. We talked about appearance — the layout, design, fonts, colors, photos. We hashed out content — article type, member information, length, the calendar. We also considered the paper used to print the magazine on and asked ourselves ‘How green can we be?’

I found that vibrant oranges, rich browns and jewel tones were the hot colors to carry through a publication. These colors are used effectively by most of the design museums like the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt. Type face was modern and mixed, but it was clear readability is key. The Art Institute of Chicago went further to portray pages with kid’s programs with more playful fonts and design themes. The use of large, vivid, expressive images was and is always impressive.

Content ranged from the wildly popular features on exhibitions and upcoming programming to artist profiles and member interviews. The Walker in Minneapolis does an excellent job of highlighting a member, possibly picked right off the street, for a Q&A and an always inviting snapshot. And my favorite idea from the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego is a “take-away” poster of their upcoming or current exhibition inside the magazine. This is no Jonathan Taylor Thomas.

After a passionate discussion (and far past the scheduled meeting time), everyone still had their own favorites. If our decided mission is to be an award-winning publication to our readers/members, why not ask their opinion? We included the survey below in the spring 2008 issue and received incredible feedback. (Thank you all.)

Members, watch your mailboxes in April for your summer Previews issue. And keep telling us what you think. If you’re not a member and would like to join the IMA to begin receiving this perk, you can join the family here.

A shout out to Art for You, coming to mailboxes before Previews, and a disclaimer that the institutions mentioned above may or may not contain the content I praised them for. There were A LOT of magazines on that table.