With a new year, a new look to our magazine

DOUGLAS FARMER, SENIOR EDITOR DOUG.FARMER@PHOTONICS.COM

Welcome to the new look of BioPhotonics! We’re thrilled to have you as readers and hope our improved appearance enhances your visual experience, and your enjoyment, while learning about the latest in biomedical optics and life sciences research. Our January/February edition features a more modern appearance. And the redesign of our publication is coinciding with the launch of our dedicated website, www.biophotonics.com, which offers the industry-leading content for those in the biophotonics community — everything from insights into the inner workings of cancer cells to virtual programs about the operation of specialized illumination in microscopes comes together in one striking package offering intuitive navigation, surrounding the topics that those in industry and academia work with every day.

Our team, led by art director Suzanne Schmidt, began by asking: “What would be the key aesthetic elements that would capture the attention of both new and longtime readers?” We started with a more contemporary logo, a cleaner appearance of our contents page as well as more pronounced headlines and section headings, larger and crisper fonts, and the display of columnists’ images at the top of the page.

We asked, “What is it that our readers look forward to the most in our magazine?” Respondents to a recent survey made it clear that they looked especially to our feature articles, which cite the expansive and in-depth coverage of innovations in biophotonics. So, we employed larger images, bolder headlines, and technology tags as well as quoted stand-alone statements to draw the reader into some of the key technical and scientific questions that will be answered within.

The reader survey also confirmed that we continue to be a resource for educators in the optics field, with teachers looking to our publication for particular technology-focused topics, including fluorescence microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. This need was a major driver that prompted us to make section headings more pronounced and attractive, with strong delineation in our news pages.

Our readership of 27,500 subscribers is evenly divided between print and digital formats; our website provides easy access to regularly updated news and features, breakthrough products, and virtual webinars and conferences as well as the “All Things Photonics” podcast. We hope these changes greatly enhance your reading experience of our print and online editions. If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the years, it’s that innovation in the optics and photonics industry — particularly when it comes to how light can power the latest in diagnostics — is ever-changing. We will continue to change along with it. Thank you for taking this journey with us!

Enjoy the issue!
Douglas J. Farmer