Covering Our Future (or where are the designers?)

I don’t write much about print on here, but long-time readers will know I’m not a “print is dead” type. I do believe that print will have to change and evolve to deal with the changing environment – much as theatre had to after the coming of cinema and then television – but that it will survive. And I’m glad about that, because I love magazines as objects, especially when they’re designed to really showcase the visual impact good print titles can create. 

Yesterday, I had a day that caused me to think much more about design than I normally do. It started the moment I walked through the doors of Quadrant House, RBI’s Sutton main office. There’s a big wall of our magazines in reception there, and the above cover, of***Hairdressers Journal*, really leapt out at me from that wall. It has a level of design aspiration above that of most of our titles, with a few honourable exceptions – *[New Scientist](http://www.newscientist.com/)* for a start – and some meetings later in the day reminded me how lacking traditional publishers can be in design aspiration online. Again, I think [HJi](http://www.hji.co.uk), the online version of *H**airdressers Journal*, leads the way in our company.

Is it me, or is the issue of design, of user-experience of our website almost entriely absent from the future of journalism debate? And, if so, why the hell is that?