Few traits make as many prominent appearances in Texas’s history as our capacity for reinvention. Whether born of inspiration, desperation, or folly, such transformations have always marked our character. Over the decades, we have refashioned hearts to save lives, retooled the extraction techniques for oil and gas that have fueled a century-long energy boom, and refused to accept that an indoor sports stadium was an impossibility (RIP, Astrodome).
That instinct to improve on our world continues to this day. This month’s issue of Texas Monthly, which marks our forty-fifth anniversary, focuses on the people who are remaking fields as diverse as food, medicine, and technology.
We have also reimagined Texas Monthly’s design, both in the magazine and, as you can plainly see, online. In print, our goal was to better capture the beauty and variety of Texas, in all its bright, zany glory. A new omnibus front-of-book section, the State, puts our coverage of travel, food, style, culture, news, and Texana in one place, where they are much more clearly marked than they previously were. The redesign, with its generous use of white space, is also intended to give our photographs and illustrations more room to shine.
I should note that the print redesign also addresses some common reader complaints. We’ve made adjustments to improve legibility, reduced the amount of hunting a reader must do to find and finish articles, and reinvigorated the Dining Guide.
As for our redesigned website, it has been reorganized using the same subject matter areas featured in the magazine’s State section. We have also placed more emphasis on supporting our big initiatives, such as extending Texas Monthly storytelling to podcasts, newsletters, live events, and video, and we hope that the resulting changes will give you more reasons to interact with us more often.
Most of these changes stem from inspiration, none of them stem from desperation, and we hope we’ve avoided folly. But that’s for our readers to decide.
And by the way, if anyone has an idea for reinventing the Astrodome, I’m all ears.
Happy reading.
