Criminal Acts

When your company’s Creative Director suddenly resigns during the final week of the production cycle, you know its going to be a tough week. When you find out a few hours later that he also deleted 155GB of art content from one of the art computers that doesn’t get backed up, it would be easy to enter a panic mode. Fortunately, we didn’t have time to panic. Within a few hours, the solution had materialized. Instead of assembling a team that would just be able to finish the magazine by the deadline, we instead decided to bring in the talent required to give DSport the much needed redesign that our staff had desired.

DSport: The Redesign

Enter Kevin Convertito. About 10 years ago, Kevin was the Art Director behind the design of the original Import Tuner magazine. When Import Tuner was purchased by PRIMEDIA, Kevin decided to head north and put his talents behind a number of new title launches. About a year and a half later, Kevin found his home for the last eight years at High Speed Productions. High Speed Productions are the publishers of such titles as Thrasher and Juxtapoz. Enough about his credentials, Kevin’s plan for the redesign was to not simply establish a new look, but also improve the functionality of the magazine through superior navigation, improved readability and faster information delivery. With the help of another Art Director that must remain nameless (we wish we could tell you their name too), DSport was able to evolve into its new design. Now, DSport finally looks the part of being the best import performance magazine on the newsstand.

A New Beginning

One bad attitude can definitely affect an entire team. The departure of our former Creative Director has ushered in a new era of excitement, interest and passion from the staff at DSport. Next month, we will be introducing our readers to our newest editorial addition, Technical Editor Aidan Spraic. We’ve known Aidan for years and we are excited to have him joining out team. Next month, we also hope to be showcasing the talents of our yet-to-be-chosen Art Director.

Moral of the Story

In life, problems are going to arise when least expected. Taking time to panic or seek pity doesn’t get you anywhere. When something breaks, it has to be fixed. You can try to take a short cut and fix it the wrong way, or you can take the opportunity to build it better. It’s quite simple. If you keep burning out the stock clutch, don’t simply replace it, upgrade it.



Michael Ferrara