This Week on The Austin Chronicle Show: It's All About Design
Art Director Jason Stout and Publisher Nick Barbaro on the air
By Kimberley Jones, 3:30PM, Fri. Jan. 31, 2020
This week we launched a new look for the newspaper, a process that's been months, and even years, in the making.
Austin Chronicle Art Director Jason Stout is the guy behind the new design, which includes a new masthead. He joined me in the KOOP studio this week to discuss his inspiration for the redesign. Also joining us: Chronicle Publisher Nick Barbaro, who shared some stories about the early, pre-digital days, back when the paper only came out every other week and the tools of the trade included X-Acto knives and light boxes.
To celebrate the launch of the new masthead, we dedicated the paper this week to stories about signs, including:
• What Trump has to do with our new masthead
• A look back at (nearly) 40 years of Chronicle mastheads
• The stories behind iconic Austin signs like the Paramount blade and Magnolia Cafe's "Sorry We're Open" neon sign
• How the practice of wayfinding orients you in space and gets you from here to there
• Why the neon sign announcing the Red River Cultural District is so significant
• A quiz that tests your knowledge of Austin signs
• A photo gallery of the many notes we've left our coworkers around the Chronicle office: sometimes helpful, sometimes nonsensical, sometimes very, very angry – but always entertaining
SHOW CREDITS
Host: Kim Jones. Guests: Nick Barbaro, Jason Stout. Engineer: Bob Dailey. Theme music: Kevin Curtin and Jonas Wilson.

Catch The Austin Chronicle Show Fridays, 3pm, on KOOP 91.7 FM.
Find old episodes on the Chronicle’s A/V page.
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Chronicle Audio, graphic design