Before & After: Timeless Design Lessons

Hi, I’m David Blatner, president of the CreativePro Network. And in this episode of the CreativePro Podcast, I’m joined by our editor-in-chief, Mike Rankin, to discuss Before & After Magazine, which for 20 years presented simple but powerful evergreen design lessons that anyone could learn from. Now, I’m happy to say that this amazing magazine has found a new home at CreativePro.

And Mike and I are going to talk about why that’s important and how you can find it. But before we get started, I want to remind you that CreativePro is the essential how-to resource for design professionals, and we have all kinds of cool stuff coming up that you should know about. This week, we have part one of the Online Design & AI Summit.

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That’s five days of InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, PowerPoint, print, and digital publishing. The whole enchilada held in Nashville, Tennessee. And it’s hybrid, so there’s an online option too.

You can learn about both of these events and more at creativepro.com slash events. Oh, and don’t forget, you’ll save $100 on any CreativePro event when you use the discount code podcast. Okay, that’s enough for now.

I’m excited to get into this. Coming up Before and After Magazine on this episode of the CreativePro Podcast. Mike Rankin, welcome to CreativePro Podcast.

And David Blatner, welcome to CreativePro Podcast. The two of us, we don’t get a chance to talk that often on here. So this is great.

I mean, this is going to be fun. I love coming on here every time. So Before and After Magazine, it started in around 1990 or something, really early.

Yep. Very early. Shortly after John’s career as one of the inaugural desktop publishers, he started gathering everything that he knew, his experiences into this magazine to share with the world.

So, and as you said, went on for many, many years, had subscribers literally around the world. I think the last list I saw was 131 countries he had subscribers from. So it was a global publication.

This was a real magazine, Before and After Magazine, actual print magazine. You could find, I found it in stores. It was not just mailed.

It was in magazine stores as well. I’ve got a couple issues here from over the years. I love this magazine.

Let’s start. You mentioned John. Let’s start talking about John.

John McWade, an amazing designer from the early days. Let’s talk about who this guy was and why was this so important? Wow. So, all right.

You want me to go first? I know you can. Go for it. Go for it.

Chime in with stuff. Yeah. So as I said, John was one of the first desktop publishers in the mid eighties.

He went to a conference. And so a very early demo of all this page maker. And it was around that same time that Apple’s LaserWriter and Adobe’s PostScript were all coming together and just forming this critical mass to transform design and publishing.

And John just knew it instantly what he had seen, like it was a lightning bolt. At the time, he had a really great job as the art director of Sacramento Magazine, which the magazine about the city, it’s still being published today. But he knew that he was going to abandon that job and just be part of this new revolution that was coming because he recognized the power of it.

That was just astonishing. When I think about that, he saw an early Mac. This is a little tiny nine inch screen with a very low resolution, 72 DPI monitor.

He saw a pre-release version, alpha version or beta version of PageMaker. And he said, I’m quitting my job and I’m going to become a desktop publisher. The leap of faith, the vision that John had from the earliest days was astonishing.

It reminds me of something like Steve Jobs or something who can see that early technology and imagine where it’s going to go. Yes. Yes.

And imagine himself going along that ride. So he leaves, he goes off. He starts doing desktop publishing.

I would say he probably was the first desktop publisher because of this. I mean, there were engineers doing this, but he really, as a designer, embracing this new technology, he was probably the first. And then… I was just going to jump in and say, this is also a really key point that when we talk about the tools and the technology, it’s not as important as the techniques.

And that is why, as you mentioned in the start, this content that we have now is evergreen. Even though the articles were published in the 1990s, they’re still just as relevant today because they’re about solving design problems and thinking in terms of design to communicate the message you want to get across. And it’s really that powerful lesson that techniques transcend tools.

John knew the tools were in their early embryonic stage, but he… was able to just transcend that and get his message across, which is why it’s still so important and why we wanted to have it for Creator Pro today. I’m so glad you mentioned that because it is key. It is key that he… At the time, there were all these people who were learning the tools.

And we’re like, well, we don’t know. We still can’t design well, but we know the tools. And John sort of jumped over that.

Like you said, it’s not about the tools. How do you have an eye for design? How do you develop a sense for design, a gut for it? And he said, that’s what we need. That’s what we need to be teaching people, all these designers and non-designers.

So a lot of his audience were non-designers who simply needed to get up to speed as quickly as possible. Absolutely. And in the 90s, I feel like this is a safe place to say, we saw a lot of really bad design work come out when these tools were new.

And people like me who had no formal design training whatsoever were suddenly thrust into these positions and told to figure it out. And we desperately needed someone like John to hold our hand and show us the way. I’m going to push that into the present day too.

We still see lots and lots of terrible design out there because it’s so easy to get up to speed with these tools. It’s not easy to develop that design sense. And so again, what John was teaching for 20 years, Before and After it was around for 20 years, is still totally relevant today.

And then Before and After it disappeared. It just disappeared. He spent 20 years putting his heart and soul into this magazine.

He and his wife, Gay-Anne, who is the editor, and they worked together putting this information out into the world. How to design, how to think about design, how to just communicate more clearly because that was such a clear piece for him was communication. Design is communication.

How to do all that. And then the world changed. The world changed and Before and After stopped.

Lots of reasons. We don’t need to get into all of those. One of the reasons though was he went to work for LinkedIn Learning.

And LinkedIn Learning, he started doing videos about design, which I believe are still available at LinkedIn Learning. Great stuff. Absolutely.

Absolutely. I just checked today and 18 of John’s courses are still available on LinkedIn Learning. I think the most popular one is called something like Things Every Designer Must Know.

This is a really short course. It’s like maybe an hour long, like 10 or 11 movies. That thing has been watched by over a quarter million people and everybody loves it.

So I highly recommend if you’re a LinkedIn Learning member to check that out. That is awesome. But he goes off and does that.

Time goes by. Before and After kind of disappears. And then the story gets a little sad.

John started having some health issues and he and I started talking. We’ve been friends for a long, long, long time. And I said, you know, remember those articles from Before and After? Remember how cool those were? Why don’t we have access to those? Why can’t we get those out into people’s hands? Long story short, he and I worked for months to make this happen.

And then sadly, John passed away. So I continued talking with John’s widow, Gay-Anne. And Gay-Anne said, you know what? This is so important.

This is really important to put John’s work out in front of designers. Let’s make this thing happen. So Gay-Anne and I worked on this.

And we said, let’s get this stuff onto CreativePro. And we worked out a deal. And I’m so happy to report that many of the Before and After articles are now available at CreativePro.

And that’s what we really wanted to talk about was this incredible resource, which is now available to members at CreativePro.com. It’s incredible to see these things available for download again. And the articles are set up. They’re different than most of the other articles where we just have, you know, you can read through them like a blog post, right? These articles were so carefully designed.

John spent so much time getting them just right that we said, look, we can’t pull them apart. We just have to put the PDFs up there and let people download the PDF. So you can learn the lesson, read through them, and more importantly, see the design for yourself.

Yes, and there’s a key distinction. So overall, there’s 125 Before and After posts on CreativePro right now. Yeah.

Some of those are just quick design tips that are freely available to anyone. The PDF articles that we extracted from the magazines are member-only content. And those are the real meaty, in-depth stuff that is just the highest value, just amazing content.

So it’s all there. There’s a landing page that has been set up on the website. It’s just before, after, archive with hyphens between the words there.

And we can put links. We’ll put links in the show notes so you can jump there quickly. Yeah, it’s a lot to explore.

There’s a lot to explore. It’s worth going in and looking around. What are some of your favorites? Like you said, there’s 120 of these plus many more tips.

Do you have any? I mean, I’ll share one of my favorites, honestly. It’s actually a series that he did about Gestalt, the Gestalt design. The idea that when you’re doing design, you have to understand about the big picture.

What are you seeing and how it affects us personally? This is one of the reasons why the work he did is truly evergreen, why it’s so appropriate now as much as ever. Talking about equilibrium and proximity, the concept of isomorphism. I love the idea of isomorphism in design.

And the words don’t mean nearly as much as understanding the concept. So like isomorphism relates to this idea. He uses the example of a cactus, like a finger about to touch the spine of a cactus.

And when you see the picture or even hear it, hear about a finger about to touch the spine of a cactus, you get it, right? And it’s not just a sense in your head. You feel it in your body. You know what that’s going to feel like at some level.

And that is part of design, the feeling that you’re conveying. And you can convey that feeling through not just what’s on the page, but also where things are in relation on the page. Absolutely.

I 100% agree with your picking the Gestalt articles, because they’re the ones that are most widely applicable. It’s just purely about visual communication at just a masterclass level. And it doesn’t matter if you’re designing a website, an annual report, a brochure, whatever.

All those lessons apply to what you’re doing. So those are some of the best ones. The other ones that I think are also really widely applicable are the ones to do with fonts and typography.

So things like how to use that typeface and what typeface goes with this. And just because we’re drowning in fonts nowadays. So picking the right one for the job is a thing we all have to do.

And those are great articles. I like that. And then there’s other ones which, for me, really helped me see through his eyes.

Because one of the greatest things about working with a designer who’s a teacher is that ability to learn how to see, how to look through somebody’s eyes. One example of that was there was an article on how to design with motion. And this is something I’ve struggled with for years.

I want something to look like it’s moving, whether it’s Photoshop or any app. Maybe I want to give a sense of motion. How do you do that? There’s a motion blur.

But why does it work? Understanding why it works and what things to look for, it’s a little thing. But it’s the kind of thing that you can’t find anyplace else. You just need that understanding.

He was so, so good at explaining the why in just simple, plain English. Not like hoity-toity stuff. Never seemed like he was talking down to you.

Just talking like a friend. Saying, oh, if you move this here and you change that, then it transforms something from good to great. It does.

From good to great. So true. So we have all these articles up there.

It’s for members. Like you said, the downloads are for members only. Actually, some people listening or watching may not know about CreativeProbe membership.

I think it’s important to let people know that when you have a CreativeProbe membership, you get access to all kinds of stuff. The whole point of CreativeProbe membership is that you get access to a lot more materials. You get access to these Before and After articles.

You get access to all kinds of other downloadables, templates, and starter kits, and all kinds of things that you can use in your work. One of the things that you get access to is videos. We’ve started doing member-only videos, which are like tutorials on various subjects.

And they’re more in-depth. You can go to YouTube and get surface-level stuff. But we’re trying to make high-quality tutorials at CreativeProbe for the creative professional.

Myra Ferguson recently did one on Premiere. If you are maybe using InDesign, but you want to learn a little bit about Premiere, this is a perfect way to launch yourself into that. So Nolan Hames did one on PowerPoint.

I did one on InDesign, I should point out. It’s people have been saying nice things about it. So I’m proud of that.

It’s something like, what is it? Like 25 essential tips that you need to know. I don’t remember the name of it. Yeah, but it was really like a hundred tips.

You just kept like bombarding, shotgunning. There’s a lot to know for sure. So it’s one of those things.

If you’re an InDesign user and you’re trying to get more efficient, more productive, these are the tips that you absolutely need to know as a pro InDesign user. So that’s another video that’s available. Part of the membership of CreativePro.

Yeah, just to fill out the picture. So yeah, you get CreativePro Magazine, you get the members only videos, exclusive content, downloadables, discounts, members only forum. There’s just all kinds of things to support you as a designer.

You know, I’m glad you mentioned the discount because I mentioned in the intro about the events, upcoming events. As a member, you actually get a bigger discount to the events than the podcast one. So definitely check that out.

If you’re going to go to the event, any of the events, Design and AI, Design and Marketing, Design and Accessibility, the InDesign conference, any of those, you probably want to be a member because you get the biggest discount. For sure. Okay.

What else should we say about Before and After? I really feel that this is such an important resource that I’m feeling just very, very, very happy that we’re able to put out for members again. Yeah, I get emails from folks thanking us for putting this stuff online. And some of the emails are from older fans who grew up in their career with the magazine, and they’re so happy to see it made available again.

Right now, to track down that content, because John’s website is really not all that functional anymore, you have to go on eBay or some other site and try to buy copies of the old magazine one at a time for 10 to 15 bucks. And here, you get the whole smorgasbord, and people are really responding to that. There’s also people that are just discovering it for the first time, and it’s just really resonating with what they need to do on a daily basis.

So it’s been great to get those responses. That’s beautiful. It really is beautiful.

The goal, ultimately, is helping designers thrive. And part of thriving is giving them the tools, giving you all tools to be able to do your work better. And it’s not just the tools themselves.

It’s tools, not just to use the tools, tools to how to think, how to think, how to design, how to get that designer’s eye. I’ll be honest, we don’t have that much material on that at CreativePro. This was kind of an empty area.

It wasn’t empty. I mean, we had some design stuff, but not nearly as much as how to use InDesign, how to use Photoshop over the years. Absolutely.

That was another reason why I was thrilled to have this content, because we do have, I mean, in the CreativePro repository, we have over 16,000 articles. It’s actually inching towards 17,000 articles now. The vast, vast majority of those are how-to content in specific applications.

How do I do something in Photoshop? How do I do something in InDesign? But the actual just pure design category did not have a lot of stuff in it. We have some great, great stuff from Nigel French recently. He’s been doing this ongoing series in the magazine of how to be a better designer.

I love that stuff. But the overall volume of content we had just on pure design techniques was pretty small. But now, it’s really robust.

It’s got just an incredible amount of stuff, thanks to the Before and After. Yeah. I have to say out loud, thank you to Gay-Anne and to John for not just creating all this amazing material, but really working with us to ensure that it has a life into the future.

I feel really honored that we’re able to hold this for people. Same. Absolutely.

I do want to mention there’s a couple other… We’re going to put some links in the show notes that I think people should know about. For example, John spoke at the InDesign user group a few years ago. And it’s wonderful to see him do his thing and really talk about it.

And you get the sense of how humble he was, how curious he was, how kind he was, and how important it was to him that people start being able to see more and communicate more cleanly, carefully. We also… You wrote an article. We just need to say you wrote this great article for CreativePro Magazine about Before & After and about this collection.

And you collected a lot of things that people had said about Before & After and about John. So we’re going to put a link in the show notes to that as well. So that’s a must read.

Yeah. There were some great quotes from Chuck Green and Alan Gerbertson and you as well on just what the magazine meant, its overall reach, and how it’s just going from generation to generation. The lessons that these guys learned, they’re using for the people that they mentor and so on and so on.

So it’ll just continue. I love that. It’s really… It’s a pleasure to be able to talk to you, Mike, about all of this and to introduce this to the world.

Because a lot of people haven’t… They never got a chance to see Before & After. This was before people’s time. So it’s so nice that we get a chance to do this and to talk about it.

Last thoughts? What’s your thinking? I just have one last thing and I’m going to actually read it from my show notes. Because it’s a quote from John. So I want to directly quote him.

And it’s from a post that I found on his personal blog at McQuaid.com. And one of his readers who lived in Haiti and produced these very serious reports for government agencies on things like poverty and infant mortality and access to clean drinking water. Like really life and death issues. Wrote to John to thank him for teaching him to design these reports and make them more compelling and more impactful.

Because that could translate into action. Like political will to invest money and resources to fix these problems. And John was very moved by this guy reaching out to write to him.

And I’ll just read… I’m not going to read John’s whole response. But I just want to read a little bit of it. Because I think it really is a nice way to sort of wrap this up and encapsulate the Before and After experience.

So in response to the guy, John wrote, As a designer, you have a privilege, one that others do not. It is the privilege of making visible that which others can only imagine, feel or think. When you do this, you open a window through which your audience can see, know and understand.

Design is about communication. Design isn’t about making something only look better, but actually function better. Design has to do with how a thing works.

And to me, that is just like the mic drop moment, just encapsulating the whole of Before and After. It’s like design has to do with how a thing works. I love that.

I love that. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that, Mike.

That’s beautiful. It’s powerful words. And it shows the value of what we do as designers and communicators, I think, is captured there.

What we do and why we do it. It’s so easy to get caught up in the little nitty gritty of, I’m just doing this job, this one little thing. But it’s so important to stand back and get a sense of why are we doing this? We’re helping people make the world better.

We’re helping, at whatever level, our why ultimately is helping communication happen. And communication of ideas, communication of feelings, communication of, even in politics, everything. Helping communication happen more cleanly.

That is just perfect how it works. He really makes the case for the power that designers have. And sometimes we might not always feel that, but it is real and it’s there.

It really is. Thank you, Mike. Thank you for just taking the time and all the work that you and Jeff and Hannah, everyone put into getting this collection up on CreativePro.

It’s a pleasure to see it there at last. And it’s a pleasure to do it. So this is great.

Thank you all for joining us on this episode of the CreativePro podcast. We have lots more coming up. But check us out.

And I hope we’re going to see you at one of the CreativePro events soon. That’ll be fun. Great.

All right. Take care. Bye.