I don’t know if you noticed the caterpillar-chrysalis-butterfly ads we’ve been running in the magazine this year. If you didn’t, you may get your September issue in the mail and think, “Whaa..?" I understand. It’s a big change. We went pretty stealth on talking about our magazine redesign; those metamorphosis teaser ads were pretty much it. And now we’ve got a new logo, a wider format (more real estate for photos!), all new fonts and color schemes… Surprise!

I’ve been geeking out about the design side of this for almost a year now. We engaged graphic design firm Metaleap Creative (Atlanta) to do all the dirty work, and I appreciated my role as “the client.” The parallels between what we were doing and what Healthcare Design readers do every day weren’t lost on me: The designers were very methodical in teasing out our ultimate goals, helping us prioritize them, and identifying challenges we faced in effectively presenting the stories we want to tell. They listened, got to work, and returned with a fleshed-out visual scheme that would help us meet those goals. We went back and forth for months, tweaking and improving. It’s all about design that works.

And this is more than a cosmetic upgrade. We’ve created a new section called “In Focus” where you’ll find columns digging deeper into the latest tools, processes, and best practices in research, interior design, construction, operations, and more. We’ve added the image-driven “Photo Tour” up front, a splashy look at one new specialized healthcare project each month. Our back page is now “Face Time,” where you’ll get to know the people behind the projects a little better, in ways you might not have expected.

I’m grateful to the team at Metaleap for providing us with a new template for the magazine and for designing the features in the September issue. And thanks to Becky DeNeau, our art director, for taking those templates and designing the rest of the content in the magazine with her own personal flair. We’re excited to share the final product with you. And I look forward to getting your feedback.