The Journal of the International Digital Media and Arts Association is on the cusp of a new phase of growth and readership as founding Editor Conrad Gleber, assumes the position of the President of the iDMAa Board of Directors and passes the torch to the current Editor Michael Niederman. A complete overhaul of the design of the publication was necessary to both express the spirit of this transition and to meet the challenges ahead. This re-design of the iDMAa Journal is intended to embody the stimulating attitude of the present time period and to reflect on the diverse and exciting organization this journal represents.

The design concept for the iDMAa Journal utilizes a visual feature common to text in a computerized context: the selection box. The colored boxes that appear around text selected by a user can be found on computer operating systems throughout the world. By amplifying this ubiquitous motif, a strong and unifying aesthetic emerges that is at once commonplace and curiously unfamiliar. The brute force of this unremarkable effect can be quite dramatic when the selection box of the screen has been decontextualized by the surface of the printed page.

At the beginning of every essay in this issue of the Journal is a screen capture of the author’s desktop. This arbitrary, yet subjective imagery provides a glimpse into the mind of the writer by presenting a casual (or studied) snapshot for the reader to see. What desktop image does the writer choose to look at everyday? How are the various folders arranged and what are their names? What files are hastily cluttering the public space of their screens? These mundane details have significance and reveal much about the one who placed them there. They are an intriguing backdrop for the carefully articulated academic essays that follow.

The typeface used is Helvetica Neue, which is based on the original Helvetica designed by Swiss type designer Max Miedinger in 1956. In 1983, the German type foundry D. Stempel AG redesigned and digitized the “Neue Helvetica” typeface for Linotype and made it a self-contained font family. When it was first released, Helvetica was heralded for its modern form and expressive strength, but it has since come to represent the essence of ubiquity through its nearly universal adoption as a default typeface on contemporary computer systems (in its pure or bastardized forms). It is Helvetica’s rather distinctive commonality that I have chosen to embrace with this design.

I hope you enjoy the new incarnation of The Journal of the International Digital Media and Arts Association, as we build upon the successes of the past and find new form and relevance for the future.

Randall Hoyt, Design Editor

University of Connecticut