Designing magazines is not all glamorous trips to Beaumont, Texas, and no-star motels. Sometimes we have to design things like subscription renewal forms. This one came to us out of the blue from a printer we work with. Unbeknownst to us, The Absolute Sound had printed a supply of cover onsets over 15 years ago, and were still using them! Looking like it was designed to be as unappealing and illegible as possible, with a color palette inspired by the netherworld waiting room at the end of Beetlejuice, we were grateful for the opportunity to redesign it.

An onset or tip-on is a piece of paper which is glued to the front cover, and warns the subscriber that this is the last issue of their current subscription - so they need to renew. It needs to emulate the cover banner (the name of the magazine) as postage rules require the magazine name to be most prominent. The flip side of the form is black and white, so we simply copied the front page look and feel to fill that space.

The new look we came up with won't be going in anyone's portfolio, but it is much cleaner, simpler, and - most importantly - readable. Take a look at the before and after below.