When I joined Plastics News two years ago, the most frequent questions I received were about the print publication. Would it stay weekly? Would we continue to invest in it?
The answer remains a resounding “yes!”
Your copy of Plastics News looks a little different this week Hopefully, you believe (like we do) that it looks a little better, too. Thanks to the hard work of our Art Director Jessica Jordan, PN is debuting our new logo along with minor changes to the publication. Think updated headline fonts, bigger graphics, a new color scheme.
Our inspiration is a modern, clean look that speaks to the sophisticated plastics industry. Our hope is this new look adds to the readability of Plastics News, giving our community of readers and advertisers the newspaper you deserve.
Our new logo was not created in a vacuum. Months ago, we set out to design a logo that is now shared by our sister publications, Plastics News Europe and Plastics News China. We wanted to convey the relationship between our brands with a strong visual representation. In short, Plastics News should look like Plastics News no matter where you see it.
Going one step further, on Oct. 5 we also announced the formation of our Global Polymer Group. This group is a collection of Crain Communications' media brands in the plastics, rubber and urethanes industries. The brands operate out of Crain Communications Inc. offices in Detroit, Akron and Croydon, England. These print publications, websites, trade shows, conferences and more pull together our collective knowledge and marketing means under one umbrella group within Crain.
Creating the Global Polymer Group pushes us to work closely together on more projects. This only benefits our customers and we already have plans in the works for 2016 that we'll share with you soon. We now have more than 80 media professionals working to bring you news and content through dynamic, global marketing channels.
Of course, our teams within Crain have collaborated for years on projects such as show daily newspapers. That will continue next year, too. In fact, I'm proud to share that our team will once again be producing the show daily newspapers at K 2016 in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Our partnership with Messe Düsseldorf continues with the production of six daily newspapers in October 2016. These projects energize our editorial staff since we employ so many former daily newspaper editors and reporters. In addition, our team from Croydon will again organize Design@K 2016, a two-day conference held on the trade fair grounds.
The business marketplace never stands still. Therefore, Plastics News continues to evolve to serve you. We love to hear from you. So, feel free to let me know ([email protected]) what you think of our new look and how else we can inform and engage with you.
Lafferty is publisher of Plastics News and group publisher of Crain's Global Polymer Group.