Our Makeover Announcement

In an era of downsizing, Inventors Digest is growing subscribers, increasing ad revenue, adding staff, launching new features … and it’s launching a bold new redesign.

January 2009 marks the makeover of the nation’s longest-running magazine in the invention industry. The redesign includes playful and explosive use of graphics and text presentation – garage fonts, grid-paper backgrounds and duct-taped call-out boxes. Even page numbering gets an Edisonian touch.

The publication’s award-winning production staff also is offering to design for free an ad for those who buy full-page ads with the magazine.

“The word we use to describe our new look is ‘organic,’” says newly hired creative director Ted Pate.

Indeed, the redesign reflects the lab experiment, coffee-spill, work-in-progress aspect of inventing and innovation.

“More people are turning to inventing and entrepreneurial pursuits in the face of massive downsizing and disillusion with 9-to-5 jobs,” says Mike Drummond, the magazine’s editor-in-chief. “And then you’ve got the overwhelming desire to wean ourselves from oil. We’re on the cusp of an energy and transportation renaissance. Inventors Digest is steeped in this cauldron of experimentation.”

To meet demand, Charlotte, N.C.-based Inventors Digest has brought aboard two new editors-at-large on the West Coast – Jennipher Adkins and Eva Winger.

Winger will be shepherding a new feature called Spark, which each month will chronicle the journey of three women entrepreneurs in different stages of their businesses.

The magazine also lured Kelly Blinson to head its Radar section, which features new products, off-beat innovations and other news from the inventing world.

“We’re going to add a new subsection for early-stage inventions called 'Under the Radar,'” Blinson says. “A place where newbies can get exposure.”

Inventors Digest also will be making a cameo in the upcoming Ben Stiller movie, Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian. Planned cover luminaries in 2009 include former Microsoft chief technology officer and gourmand Nathan Myhrvold, former Good Morning America host-turned-entrepreneur Joan Lunden, and famous researcher and Segway scooter inventor Dean Kamen.