The New Yorker Desk Diary
Production Lead, 2024
The New Yorker’s Desk Diary is a beloved, annual planner produced by every year, for several decades. For readers who want to incorporate the magazine’s timeless humor and art into their daily lives, the Desk Diary offers journaling for aesthetics and functionality. As a popular product in the The New Yorker Store and Conde Nast merchandise line, it was sold online and in-person at various New Yorker events. As the production lead for the 2024 Desk Dairy, I coordinated all the different moving parts, laying out the pages and artwork, reviewing proofs, and delivering to the printers.
Coordinating cross-departments
The project spanned across four months, creating and producing the magazines’ annual planner. In my role, I worked across departments, collaborating with legal, art, cartoon, fact checking, and copy to gather all material, along with rights usage, and verify the contents. I began with a thorough review of past templates across the years, and updating those most recent for the 2024 calendar year.
Cover-to-cover
In this edition of The New Yorker Desk Diary, we also updated the spine and cover. Previous versions of this planner used variations of The New Yorker’s mascot, Eustace Tilley, for the front. However, for 2024, we chose to take a fresh approach in this edition by using a popular and beloved dog illustration on the front cover, featured in a past issue of the magazine. The following years would eventually use a cat and butterfly, following this theme of animals.
I worked with managing editors, as well as fact checking, to review the holidays and dates recognized by the magazine. Additionally, we worked with editorial on updating the front-of-book section, providing to readers resources and information on local “About Town” recommendations including hotels, museums, and restaurants, theatres, bookstores, and more. In this section we also displayed archived covers of The New Yorker. It was important, working with the art and design departments, that we choose illustrations and artwork that represented the diverse artists that have worked with The New Yorker throughout its history.
