Life At Bonnier - Popular Science

Accolades for Mag+ and Popular Science+

By Bert Menninga on 2010-11-12
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Bonnier's Mag+ platform wins Guldmobilen prize while Popular Science+ a finalist in the Pixel Awards.

Bonnier's platform for digital magazines, Mag+, which was launched in spring 2010 has gotten attention around the world. At Swedish Mobil magazine's annual Guldmobilen awards, Mag+ took home the Innovative Design of the Year prize. Mag+ won the prize "for a fantastic design project that takes digital magazine reading to a new level, by making the digital platform a possibility instead of a barrier," according to Mobil.

Popular Science Adds Value with its Emerging Media Lab

By Bert Menninga on 2010-07-26
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A tailored show with gadgets and information gives Popular Science’s advertisers and media partners a taste of the latest technology

It all started with gadgets. The offices of Popular Science are filled with gadgets and new technology – everything from cell phones to tablet computers to media players – that the magazine covers for its readers. So when sales reps kept hearing from the magazine's advertisers and media partners that they wanted to know more about the latest in technology from the magazine, the staff decided it was a smart idea to connect the advertisers to the gadgets.

Digital Fun

By Bert Menninga on 2010-05-11
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Looking for a little extra digital entertainment in your life? Here are a few suggestions from Bonnier magazines.
  • Interested in the hottest new computer game? Dragon Age: Origins was rated 9 of 10 by Sweden's PC Tidningen. Read more here (in Swedish)
  • How about adding some extra action to your real-time driving? Danish Komputer for alle recommends TomTom's GPS car navigation that uses the voices of Star Wars characters.

She's a Brainiac

By Megan Miller on 2009-04-14
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PopSci's resident scientist Martha Harbison, staff nerd, helps normal people understand science better.

What do you do for Popular Science?

I have a few main tasks. One of them is to help develop the infographics and scientific illustrations that go into the magazine's feature well. That involves me learning about the science or technology and then translating the words and concepts into something visually compelling. Sometimes a technology can seem like it would be boring or complicated, but I have to turn it into something interesting that the average person would understand.

Brain Food

By Megan Miller on 2009-03-18
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Lights, camera, Oreo explosive!  PopSci.com director Megan Miller makes science delicious on Food Detectives.

My mom used to tell me not to play with my food, but she never explicitly forbade me to do experiments with it. So I was psyched when the Food Network asked me and a few of my Popular Science colleagues to guest host a TV show all about food and science.

Sam Syed: Redefining the Magazine Experience

By Ganda Suthivarakom on 2009-03-06
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A Week in the Life: Popular Science's Creative Director on the digital future of the magazine.

I first met my good friend Matthias in the summer of 1996. I had just quit my excellent job as Art Editor of Hi-Fi Choice Magazine (doesn't sound like much but we always had about ten grand's worth of cutting edge audio equipment lying around, so if you liked music it had its perks) and was looking for a regular freelance gig to finance my partying lifestyle. I ended up at a company called Haymarket, pretty big by English standards, doing a stint on a newish magazine called F1-Racing.

Sam Syed: Design Principles

By Sam Syed on 2009-03-05
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A Week in the Life: Sam Syed on design principles used in Popular Science.

Sam Syed: Infographics

By Sam Syed on 2009-03-04
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A Week in the Life: "We Love Infographics," says Sam Syed, Creative Director of Popular Science.

Photo courtesy of Sam Syed

For most magazine professionals, stories take on a very similar form: columns of text accompanied by images which "illustrate" certain things.

Layouts usually work like this: opening double page picture (if you're working on a feature) with a head and dek, then the story snakes through subsequent pages, each with one or more images, hopefully appearing on the same page they are mentioned.

This simple seeming formula is the mainstay of magazine narrative construction.

Sam Syed: CG Visions of the Future

By Sam Syed on 2009-03-04
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A Week in the Life: Sam Syed went from documentary filmmaker to designer.

photo courtesy of Sam Syed

Oddly, I am not trained as a designer but as a journalist (documentary TV), and found my way into this interesting and fun line of work by accident.

The first design project I worked on was the first Time Out Film Book, for which, by chance, I had also done some editorial work. It was about 600 pages of tightly-fitting type with a few pictures thrown in here and there. A bit like laying out out a phone book, but I loved it.

From there I graduated to magazines.

Meet Sam Syed

By Sam Syed on 2009-03-03
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"A Week in the Life": How an ex-journalist became the PopSci Media Group Creative Director.

First let me introduce myself. My name is Sam Syed, Creative Director of Popular Science, or more specifically, the PopSci Media Group, since these days we all need to work on as many projects as possible. Although I'm an Indian-born Brit, I have spent the last decade here in the United States. While my earlier years were characterized by a love of "partying" and getting "wasted", I am now happily married and live in the 'burbs outside New York with my lovely wife and two cute kids (one pictured).