One of the fun things about blogging is you don’t have to be a serious industry journalist all the time. You can have fun, once in awhile.
Besides industry issues, commentary or impressions, things we can’t do in print, one of the other uses of a blog is we can occasionally give you a peek behind the scenes at how Diesel Progress works.
While I’m not the official Old Guy at Diesel, others have me in age and/or seniority, as the staff of Diesel Progress worked on the 75th anniversary issue, I did start to feel old.
Dawn Geske and Kyle Kopplin did a tremendous job assembling the pictures and writing the captions for our A Look Back section in the May issue. As could be expected they hooted and hollered and laughed repeatedly at some of the pictures, ads, and layouts from older issues. It’s when they were giggling over stuff that happened in the time I’ve been here, that the feeling of age started creeping in.
And I have to admit some of the ads from the 1960s and 1970s look really, really silly to current eyes. Some of the World War II ads were awesome—but in today’s politically correct world would have distracted people from the celebration of 75 years of monthly publishing. But they were fervent, to-the-point ads (albeit racist and jingoistic). In terms of the message they wanted to convey and doing exactly that in no uncertain terms, they’re classics.
Marisa Roberts and her über-talented production staff also had a gleeful time looking at the layouts and designs from years past. But they also marveled at how cool looking some of them were, even today. They picked a few for use in the May issue, which for one month only was redesigned to reflect styles of our earlier times. Interestingly the 1970s is about the only decade that got passed over.
For me personally it was a trip down 35 years of memory lane, issues, stories, events, but mostly people– here and throughout the industry.
We really went back and forth about how to honor 75 years of what we think is pretty good trade publishing. You only get one chance to yell “hey we’re 75!” and we didn’t wanna look back in a few years and say “you know we should have made a bigger deal about that.”
In the end we decided not to go crazy about it all—a huge party was considered and dismissed as an extravagance in these times. We also considered a 13th issue just about us and the history of the diesel engine and engine-powered equipment industry over the last 75 years—and again the economic analysis popped up with “no sale.”
In the end, I think we hit just about the right tone externally. Between digitally recreating our first issue and posting it on our web site, the redesign of the May issue and the pull-out poster with even more images and graphics covering 75 years, we did that part just about right.
Where I think we did it really well was internally. The younger half of our age map got to see that Diesel Progress didn’t start the day they were hired. They got to see that other talented, passionate people came before them, and maybe what they did looks funny today, but I reminded them that the people that do our 100th anniversary issue may have the same reaction to their work today.
They didn’t believe it, nor should they. Such is the advantage of youth.
But I’d really like to be a fly on the wall when the planning for the 100th anniversary issue starts. “Oh man look at this weird stuff they did in 2010!”
Mike,
I agree that you got it about right! The May 1935 issue is fascinating, and presenting the 2010 edition in the old format was an inspired idea. Well done.
The folks at Diesel Progress deserve a pat on the back – even three cheers – for the 75th Anniversary Edition. It was a good fun look back at the colourful history of our industry.
I enjoyed the format and the content. It was a nice tribute to this significant milestone.