Magnificent Home Improvements: Arch MacDonnell

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Our new cover features an outdoor room on Great Barrier Island, designed by Lance and Nicola Herbst of Herbst Architects and photographed by Jackie Meiring. We really like it and hope you do too - subscribers should receive their copies today, and the magazine will be on newsstands on Monday December 5. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis9s-TUwOdcSW-e_vc82GHz-AHBHIHjraLbi0YNR29XbX2DJXaz13aKipIoTCrh6ko11lKMLYlwLdxlxFY9fBpCf_lAnTIOOi1fbZFd37j-K93nEPQoGRCkuSJpCdapV6mgQpeYS7q_Kb6/s1600/HOME+New+Zealand+Dec+Jan+2012+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" dda="true" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis9s-TUwOdcSW-e_vc82GHz-AHBHIHjraLbi0YNR29XbX2DJXaz13aKipIoTCrh6ko11lKMLYlwLdxlxFY9fBpCf_lAnTIOOi1fbZFd37j-K93nEPQoGRCkuSJpCdapV6mgQpeYS7q_Kb6/s400/HOME+New+Zealand+Dec+Jan+2012+cover.jpg" width="308" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Our new issue also features a slick black cottage by Fearon Hay Architects on Great Barrier Island, a colourful, 50s-inspired bach on the Kapiti Coast by Parsonson Architects, New Zealand-born architect David Howell's glamorous New York apartment, a former dental clinic reinvented as a bach at Lake Taupo by Rick Pearson and Briar Green, and lots more. The graphic design boffins among you will also be interested to know that this issue features a redesign led by Arch MacDonnell at Inhouse Design. Let us know your thoughts on it...</span>

Our new cover

Our new cover features an outdoor room on Great Barrier Island, designed by Lance and Nicola Herbst of Herbst Architects and photographed by...

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAJNxcVeiOht09S3lxIy7_j4gxdmj7V-eVIlDX8mK9AAbVA79hmuB1wwNSptihmp4lfDSIR6nz2V7bglUQTQvaFpS17uHRn-QwZXIirnOPCAxiDDRdCU24Y0Nb0YZfcT8ObHVS6gAnFY9f/s1600/Oct+Nov+2010+cover.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522914261574419842" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAJNxcVeiOht09S3lxIy7_j4gxdmj7V-eVIlDX8mK9AAbVA79hmuB1wwNSptihmp4lfDSIR6nz2V7bglUQTQvaFpS17uHRn-QwZXIirnOPCAxiDDRdCU24Y0Nb0YZfcT8ObHVS6gAnFY9f/s400/Oct+Nov+2010+cover.jpg" style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 310px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" /></a>Our next cover, which you'll see on newsstands from October 11, features our revised masthead, which you can see in the image above (the house is by Andrea Bell of Pete Bossley Architects).<br /><br /><div><div></div><div></div><div>A couple of months ago we decided that our previous masthead no longer fit as cohesively as we would like with the rest of the magazine. When art director Miranda Dempster started work here about 18 months ago, she introduced a family of rounded, friendly-looking fonts that she felt softened the harder edges of some of the architecture we feature, and enhanced the magazine's sense of approachability. Once she did this, the old masthead started to feel a bit dated; its pointiness and heavily 'constructed' feeling no longer represented what we wanted the magazine to stand for. </div><br /><div></div><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522912045321695394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKjeigh2IFpPmITQdfbTnZoSIuhGeaHgOg2C6vyQhpLJKi1SFI8xhgvGsDFnobnUf30OEu9Bglb73BXa4aQ7tFnL4IFn5NynJkgSpk4ZFgSyUcxiy8N89wvsV9Mvqtnrv2bj4tMhZzf3fD/s400/Arch+MacDonnell.jpg" style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" /><br /><div>So we contacted Arch MacDonnell (that's him in the photo above) at Auckland design firm <a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.inhousedesign.co.nz">Inhouse </a>and asked him and his team to come up with options for a new masthead that better reflected our vision for the magazine. We said we wanted something that felt evolutionary rather than revolutionary, especially considering the magazine only changed its name from <em>NZ Home & Entertaining </em>to <em>HOME New Zealand</em> three years ago. Change is good, but we didn't want to force too much radical change on our readers. </div><br /><div>After a few meetings in which Arch showed us a really exciting set of options, the masthead you see above is the one we opted for. Interestingly, as we've been showing it around the office here, some people don't even notice that there's been a change, something that suits us fine, as we didn't want our regular readers to feel they no longer recognised us. </div><br /><div></div><div>We like the new masthead's friendliness and approachability, and we also like how clean and graphic it feels. The period at the end containing the letters 'NZ' adds a nice sense of solidity, a feeling that we emphatically know what we're on about (which, most of the time, we like to think we do!). What we like most of all is how it sits so comfortably on our new cover, as if it logically belongs there. </div><div></div><div>Arch is on our next contributors' page answering questions about the new masthead. Here's what he had to say:</div><br /><div><p style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em>HOME New Zealand: How did you and your team come up with our new masthead?</em></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em>Arch MacDonnell: We wanted to soften the hard-edged angularity of the old masthead. It needed to feel more 'homely' without being too cutesy or crafty. We opted for a customised weight of <st1:place st="on">Gotham</st1:place> rounded, an elegant and modern font from the talented folk at Hoefler & Frere-Jones. We think the resulting letterforms are assertive yet not imposing. Friendly, yet not folksy. All in all, a well-rounded solution.</em></span></span></p><br /><p style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em>Did you enjoy the process?</em></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em><span lang="EN-NZ">It's always nice to work on a project that needs to evolve rather than radically change.<br /></span><span lang="EN-NZ">Getting up close and personal with the letterforms is something we like to do! </span><span lang="EN-NZ">And it’s amazing how little adjustments here and there have such an effect on the personality of a letterform. </span></em></span></p><br /><p style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em>What else are you working on at the moment?</em></span></span><br /></p><p style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em>As always there's a diverse mix of projects simmering away at Inhouse. There's a new wine label for &Co simply called The Supernatural, with a brief to break wine label conventions, a brand refresh for the Auckland Art Fair, a new book project with the irrepressible John Reynolds, and an identity extension for a coffee roastery/restaurant/bar in London (Caravan) as well as developing a series of our own graphic objects that we'll be releasing in the coming months.</em></span></span></p></div></div>

Our new masthead - and cover!

Our next cover, which you'll see on newsstands from October 11, features our revised masthead, which you can see in the image above (the...

Magnificent Home Improvements

Our new cover

Our new masthead - and cover!

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