The beginning of a new year is a good time to reflect on where we are and where we’re going, both personally and professionally.

Many of us will identify potential areas of improvement, whether at home or at work, and we’ll make New Year’s resolutions aimed at bringing about positive changes.

The challenge, of course, is to stick with those goals past February (or even January?) and to turn them into long-term practices.

If you’re still considering which New Year’s resolutions to commit to, you might best prepare yourself for success if you narrow your options down to one or two meaningful goals, rather than a long list that will be hard to keep up with.

Also, it helps to be specific with resolutions. For example, instead of pledging to “get in better shape,” set a concrete goal, like going for a daily 20-minute walk.

It’s easy to become set in our ways and to keep doing things how we’ve always done them. But sometimes we need to make a change to spark our creativity and to challenge us to grow and improve.
Here at School Bus Fleet, we resolved to start the new year with a new look, for the magazine and for our website. It’s a fitting time to do this, with 2016 being the year of SBF’s 60th anniversary (more on that to come).

Unless this is your first issue of the magazine, most likely the first thing you noticed was the new logo on the cover. This was our biggest change of all, because it’s the icon of our brand, and I can assure you that it wasn’t something we took lightly.

We considered more than a dozen new logo designs and, after narrowing down the field to two finalists, we solicited input from a group of school bus operators. The clear favorite was the version that now graces our cover moving forward.

The magazine redesign required months of planning and a great deal of work for our creative team. The result is a clean, contemporary style with a more open feel — more “breathing room,” you might say — for our editorial content. We hope you like it as much as we do.

Along with the magazine redesign, we’ve launched a new and improved website. The new site has an updated look, easier navigation and a more responsive design for users on mobile devices.

Both redesigns freshen up our venerable brand, but it’s important to note that we’ll continue to focus on delivering high-quality content — pertinent news, practical feature stories, industry analysis, etc. — to keep you informed and to help you in your mission of safely transporting the nation’s students.

That’s our year-round resolution, every year.