The Lion Roars

At the end of 2014 I had the pleasure to redesign Air Cargo World (ACW) – the oldest and most respected title in Air Cargo & Logistics, for the first time in nearly a decade. The makeover was an almost total redesign – with updated news sections, new feature layouts, and new infographics throughout.

The first issue orchestrated start to finish with the new design, ACW‘s February 2015 issue featured Ethiopian Airlines and a detailed account of how the Addis Ababa-based carrier became the largest cargo carrier in Africa. Ethiopian Airlines’ aircraft have long sported a yellow Lion on the side – the “Lion of Judah” – a symbol of national pride. This story revolved around an interview with Tewolde Gebremariam, who is today the CEO of the airline – so it was important to represent it well.

Rather than illustrate this story primarily with aircraft, I decided to use this imagery and pair it with a photo of a Lion I capture on a cloudy day at the Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester, New York. The larger illustrated lion frames the photographed lion, altered to be a monochrome. The yellow, borrowed from the Airline’s colors, informed the entire feature.

A sidebar about intra-Africa avaiation and routes took the shape of the continent itself, with an image of one of the carrier’s MD-11Fs landing at Liege to tie the end of the feature back to aircraft and industry.

A secondary feature about cool chain dynamics made use of the “Keep calm” meme. The magazine also packed it’s regular dose of news pages and commentary.

The work of reinventing ACW was not limited to just a new visual treatment – I was also responsible for all of the production duties up to and including purchasing bulk paper for the magazine to be printed on; migrating ACW‘s website from a Drupal setup to WordPress, and in handling many logistical hurdles in the handoff from previous owner OAG to new owner RoyalMedia.

Those included learning (then teaching to others) the procedures for ad tracking (print and digital), digital editions, digital edition ad insertions, and a variety of other tasks.

It was a big (but fun) job – and the title was much better for the effort. This feature won the Seahorse Award for Excellence in Air Cargo Journalism for author Randy Woods.