Creative Migration

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Creative director Darin Johnson and design director Nathan Schroeder traded Automobile's downtown digs for Car and Driver's south-side office in August. Their sleek redesign of the nation's largest car magazine debuted with the January issue.

"It's more Esquire-ish, more like a men's magazine, says Car and Driver editor Eddie Alterman. "It's crafted--not [the look of] a hobbyist magazine."

Some local car enthusiasts also see echoes of Automobile. Mark Sienko, a project manager at Carl Zeiss, notices more pictures of cars in motion and photos that extend to the edge of the page. Louis Leonard, president of Drake's Batter Mix--who drives a Cadillac CTS 4 to his office in Marshall--sees a kinship in the "big, bold" typography.

Alterman seems surprised by that reaction. He says the look he inherited when he took over at C&D last year had too much "noise and clutter....The redesign is a modern version of what people originally liked about Car and Driver before the redesign of 2006."