Every now and then, you should splurge and buy a new car or remodel your kitchen or add a new suit to your wardrobe. It’s good for your mental health. It keeps your life from getting stale and predictable.

The same holds true for a magazine. It needs to grow and change or risk becoming staid or, worse, irrelevant. Serving the needs of the pupil transportation industry is a challenge that cannot be met by a magazine that clings to the past.

Even though we’ve been around for 50 years, it doesn’t mean we’ve gotten old. By all accounts, we’ve gotten better. But now is not the time for us to rest on our laurels.

Looking better than ever
To usher in our second 50 years, we decided to redesign the magazine, starting with the logo on the cover and continuing through every department, column and feature story. If you haven’t been involved in the redesign of a publication, whether it’s a magazine, newsletter or one-page flier, you probably can’t envision how much work is involved.

It’s a huge task, choosing an array of type styles and sizes for headlines, decks, subheads, body copy and sidebars. There’s also tabs, column widths, alignments, line spacing, character tracking and a host of other details.

But the final product, as it sits in your hands, was worth the effort. It’s an eye-pleasing design that is more reader-friendly than its predecessor. For example, the body type is slightly larger, which is a benefit to our older readers, including me. We also revised the page layouts to make it easier for the reader to pick out the key points of the story. We understand that your time is limited and you need quick access to information.

Other changes afoot
In addition to redesigning the look of the magazine, we’re in the process of redesigning the content as well. Beginning next year, look for a slate of new feature stories and departments that will expand our horizons and yours.

To ensure that we’re meeting your editorial needs, we have an editorial consultant who critiques nearly every issue and recommends ways to keep our material fresh and compelling. It’s an investment that has paid dividends for our editors and our readers. We also value your feedback and use your input to find new ways to improve the magazine. Innovation is always at the top of our list of objectives.

Don’t worry, though, we won’t be throwing out the baby with the bath water. We’ll continue to publish exclusive reports such as “Great Fleets Across America,” “Top 10 Maintenance Programs” and our numerous industry studies.

Our mission is to provide the pupil transportation community with the most useful, timely information that’s available. No matter how many years go by, that will never change.