New Beginnings

(Photo by iStock/Kesu01) 

This issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review marks several significant changes. In the last issue, which celebrated our 20th anniversary, I announced that our publisher, Michael Voss, and art director, David Herbick, were leaving the publication. I am now happy to announce that Marcia Zellers has joined SSIR as our new publisher, and David Armario has joined as our new art director.

Marcia Zellers started her career in magazine publishing, working as associate marketing director at teen girls’ magazine Sassy, marketing director at Spin (then the world’s second-largest music magazine after Rolling Stone), and publisher of the music magazine Reflex. She then moved into the digital world, becoming cofounder of MTV Online, where she led MTV’s joint venture with Yahoo to create a music search engine. From there she joined Warner Brothers as supervising producer of Entertaindom, one of the early entertainment web portals and streaming services.

Since then, Marcia has spent time working in the nonprofit sector as director of the American Film Institute’s digital content lab; in higher education, where she oversaw digital marketing to students for the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising; and most recently back again in the for-profit sector, where she has held a variety of positions at digital-marketing, advertising, and branding agencies, including chief creative officer, director of brand and customer experience, and president and managing director.

Our new art director, David Armario, has a long and distinguished career in magazine design. He was the design and art director of the monthly science magazine Discover, where he led a redesign of the publication. He was design and art director of the monthly Men’s Journal, one of the most popular consumer magazines targeted at men. And he was creative director of the monthly lifestyle magazine Los Angeles, where he also led a redesign.

More recently, David has led his own creative design and art direction studio, David Armario Design, which works with publications and retailers. He is the art director of several magazines, including Stanford Medicine and Stanford Lawyer. And he works with corporate clients as well, including Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel, and Eileen Fisher.

I also want to call your attention to our magazine’s new design. Over SSIR’s 20-year history, the magazine has had three art directors, and each one has put his imprint on the publication. With this new design, David has created more white space, making the pages more pleasing to look at and the articles easier to read. He has also introduced a more contemporary design for the departments—“What’s Next,” “Field Report,” “Viewpoint,” “Research,” and “Books.” And he has refashioned the “Feature” and “Case Study” articles to make them more lively and visually engaging, adding more illustrations and more creative treatment of headlines and the overall layout. We hope you like it.

One thing that has not changed at SSIR is our mission. We remain committed to providing a media platform where people engaged in social change from all parts of society—nonprofit, government, and business—and from around the world can come together to share new ideas and practices, critique existing ones, and, most important, learn from one another.

Read more stories by Eric Nee.