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PMI - Redesign to Reach a Global Audience

Imagination has produced PM Network magazine since 2001. The magazine contributes to the worldwide dialogue on project management solutions, technology and trends while positioning the Project Management Institute as the global thought-leader in the field. The top industries represented are computers/software, information technology, telecommunications, business management services and financial services.

Because PMI’s members are located in 170 countries, PM Network must reflect this diversity in its content and design. When it was time to redesign the magazine (best practice is every two years), the team wanted to incorporate thinking from publications produced around the world.

Best Practices in Action

The PM Network design team undertook a formal audit of 12 publications, and the editorial team reviewed those same publications to cull the best ideas, topics, presentation styles and formats.

Here’s a little bit of what we discovered:

Color Palette. Imagination found that many global publications use a lot of black and red. We chose to use more black in the PM Network layouts.

Imagery. It seemed that what made the global magazines look global, was the style and content of images. The commissioned art for PM Network already evoked diversity; so we attempted to achieve even more diversity and global feel with all stock art, too.

Typefaces. Global publications are simple and bold with type use. Imagaination tried to reflect that by using clean and bold type treatments for headlines and openers in PM Network .

Next, the team collaborated on the redesign, using the audit to inform and validate their approach. The new PM Network was submitted to PMI’s brand management staff for review and approval, and the audit was presented to help sell the redesign to internal stakeholders.

PM Network editorial content also became more diverse. An eight-page feature, “Worldview,” was introduced, which analyzes business and project management in a single city in Asia Pacific, Latin America, Europe, Middle East/Africa, or North America. A revamped “News” section includes more global content. And, the number of non-North American sources has doubled in the past two years.

The redesign was approved and implemented with in the January 2008 issue of PM Network. Imagination is conducting a readership survey, and results will be available in mid-2008.

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