Yes, obviously, we’ve redesigned the magazine again. The new format finishes the transition we began last year, when we launched digital-only delivery. Back then, we made Lightwave look as much like a printed 8.5x11-inch magazine as possible, just to ease that digital evolution. But it quickly became clear that a vertical magazine isn’t easy to read on a horizontal laptop screen or desktop monitor. We tried enlarging the type and the images, but we didn’t find anything that we thought worked well. And we knew readers like you wanted something better as well.
And this new look is better. The horizontal format ensures you can read each page without squinting or scrolling. And each horizontal page contains more words than the average page in our old design. That means we haven’t scrimped on the amount of content. You can just read it more easily.
To ensure your reading remains worthwhile, we’ve added more of what makes magazines still relevant in today’s online age—depth and analysis. You’ll see this change most directly in our new departments:
- We’ve cleverly called our new kickoff department “Analysis.” Here we’ll add color to some of the stories you may have already seen on our website. Occasionally you’ll also find our take on trends or events that haven’t yet made the news.
- Next we’ll offer a conversation in classic Q&A style within our “Interview.” You can expect figures from every corner of the optical communications community—carriers, enterprises and other end-user organizations, and technology developers—to offer viewpoints and strategies for success.
- We may not have a cover in the classic sense, be we’ll have a Cover Story. Our Cover Story will take a close look at a trend, technology, or application driving optical communications.
We’ll also continue to provide the long-form technology, tutorial, and overview articles you’ve enjoyed in the past, presented together in our Features section.
And you’ll get reacquainted with a few people you haven’t seen much of in Lightwave’s pages recently: the staff. Like a lot of you, we at Lightwave have found ourselves juggling an increasing number of balls, bowling pins, and flaming swords. That’s meant we haven’t had time to do everything we’ve wanted to in the magazine—like write more articles. Or pair video and audio interviews with items in the magazine to add depth.
So we’re going to take the time to provide these extras in each issue—and still feed the website, produce webcasts, launch live events (Have you heard about Lightwave’s Optical Networks for Enterprises conference?), and offer the other information products media people must these days to pay the bills and meet your information needs. Starting in July,
Lightwave will go to an every-other-month schedule that will make all this possible. So you’ll see the magazine less frequently. But I think you’ll find it worth the wait.
Oh — we’ve also moved my “First Take” video. You’ll now find access to it on the first page of this editorial. I promise you that this one should be entertaining, if nothing else.