So be honest with me. This month’s magazine cover made you do a double take, didn’t it? With the goal to refresh, not necessarily reinvent, the look of our print product, we tweaked our logo design and implemented a new color palette — aiming for something more contemporary and cleaner-looking. Why the change? This move is part of a larger effort to create a more recognizable brand system across the many magazines, websites, and events in the Penton Energy & Buildings Group, which covers the following market segments:
- Electrical (EC&M, Electrical Wholesaling, and Electrical Marketing)
- Mechanical & Plumbing (HPAC Engineering, Contracting Business, Contractor, Contractor Leadership Live, HVAC Talk)
- Utility (T&D World, The Energy Times, Empowering Customers and Cities Event)
- Facilities (American School & University, School Designs)
- Equipment Rental (RER)
Each and every one of the magazines, websites, and events noted above is dedicated to providing high-value information to its audience through a mix of news items, short- and long-form articles, special reports, photo galleries, webinars, white papers, educational events, and more. If you visit the websites of any of these properties, which I encourage you to do, you will now see a much greater consistency in look and feel across our entire portfolio of products.
Speaking of websites… The changes we’ve made in our magazine are minor in comparison to the ones you’ll see when you visit ecmweb.com. Designed to provide an improved user experience, our new website features infinite scrolling and faster page loading. You can now browse our content by subject via the dropdown menu in the upper-left corner of our homepage. What’s more, with a responsive design, the new website is optimized for mobile devices, meaning it’s much easier to access and read on tablets and smartphones. This is a great fit for many of you who are constantly on the go.
In support of our new look and website functionality, we thought it was also the perfect time to expand our editorial focus a bit. While Lighting & Control, Energy Management, Intelligent Buildings, and Renewables are not entirely new topics for EC&M, you’ve indicated a need and a desire to know more in these areas. So we plan to meet these needs with additional news, research, and technical coverage in these areas.
But don’t worry, we have no plans to stray from our core editorial focus in the areas of the National Electrical Code (NEC), design, construction, maintenance/repair/operations, safety, power quality, reliability, test & measurement, and other important subjects you’ve come to know and expect from us.
Please share your thoughts and opinions on the changes we’ve made by writing to me at [email protected].