On July 18, 2012, the Current relaunched itself as a glossy-covered, stitched-and-trimmed, full-bleeding, too-legit-to-quit weekly magazine. This is my second full top-to-bottom redesign of the Current — my first was in summer 2007 shortly after becoming Art Director. Not only are the covers slick, glossy, and beautiful (like our previous Best of SA and Drink issues), but the interior pages have been redesigned down to every detail and some things have been re-imagined from the ground up with an eye toward a more magazine-like visuals. This has given me some more leeway to create different kinds of pages, with bolder graphics, more photos, and more playful layouts. So far reaction has been pretty positive across the board. We’ll keep thinking of ways to surprise, delight, and occasionally infuriate our readers week in and week out.

Below are some pages I particularly liked. Enjoy!

The Apoca-List is a brand-new front-of-book format buster in the San Antonio Current. Partly inspired by the totally bonkers antics of the May 21 Rapture-watchers, the Apoca-List is a handy chart that assigns points to the good and bad news of the week and adds them up. The total number measures how close we are to certain doom on a scale of -100 (everything’s cool) to +100 (Armageddon is happening, people!!!). This week we sit about halfway at a cautiously optimistic 4.9. And YES, THIS IS TOTALLY SCIENTIFIC.

Click the tiny version on the left to expand.

This week’s special 25th anniversary issue of the San Antonio Current features all-new layouts and page designs, using era-appropriate fonts and incorporating vintage Currentlogos into the designs. The biggest trick, however, is the 25-year timeline (technically it’s, like, three timelines) that stretches throughout 2o pages of editorial. If you unstitched the issue and laid the pages out chronologically (minus ads), the timeline would be about 197 inches long … almost 16.5 feet (or 59,097 pixels for you digital folks)! I don’t know if that’s a record for longest infographic, but it’s definitely the largest one I’ve ever produced. I’ve included the timeline in its entirety for your scrolling pleasure. Enjoy the last 25 years, as seen through the eyes of the San Antonio Current.

Click below to expand the full timeline.

One or two Wednesdays ago, I was taking a break from my Broadway 5050 gig with Chris Maddin (where we play covers and originals as the Tiago Splitters) and sat down with members of my solo project, Bad Breaks. BB is now made up of members of my other two bands, Marcus Rubio and the GCOP and We Leave at Midnight, and I joked about how all the various band-member overlapping/collaborating would make a great Venn diagram. So in the spirit of procrastination and mental/physical exhaustion (it was a good birthday week), here’s what I came up with … only I soon discovered I couldn’t just limit it to my own personal projects and included as many other bands and side projects as I could think of. If any two groups share at least one member (to my knowledge), they made the chart. (If I left anybody out, I apologize!) In addition to playing with the color-coded bands mentioned above, I also am the co-founder of the Live Album Cover Project (again, with Maddin, aka Film Strips) and recently started playing drums with The Angelheaded Hipsters, led by Gordon Raphael (producer of the first two — and best — Strokes albums and first Regina Spektor LP). It’s worth noting that members of the Gospel Choir of Pillows are by far the most prolific, contributing to seven different bands in one way or another. What does this mean? I don’t know, really. OK, back to work …