A MESSAGE TO TOM BODKIN: THE BEST AND THE WORST DESIGN IN THE SAME PAPER, IN THE SAME DAY!

If today you get a copy of The New York Times (full of great stories), you will find how in the same day, the same paper, under the same art director, Tom Bodkin, can deliver the best and worst design.

You will get the amazing PLAY, The New York Times Sports Magazine, ready to win any world publication design contest (great stories, again, but superb photos, graphics, layout and printing quality).

And you will get also The New York Times Book Review that is an insult to the readers: terrible cover, no design, bad color reproduction, high-school publication layout, all kind of typographical sins, micro-photos and illustrations as space fillers...

It´s a shame because in the past they had at least great covers, like this one from Milton Glasser.

But today´s one is a perfect example of how the editor of this magazine doesn´t care, and doesn´t know anything about 101 visual journalism, typography, photo and illustration editing.

I know and respect Tom Bodkin, and he deserves a lot of credit for the step-by-step design improvement of the paper, but here there is a real challenge for him and his team.

Well, not only this one: what about the front page "jumps" that we, the readers, hate so much?