Popular Mechanics

Legacy brands don't die from being old. They die from being polite.  

Services

Brand Strategy, Editoral Design

Role

Associate Creative Director in title. Acting Creative Director in practice. Filled the CD seat during the redesign — managed the team, worked directly with the Editor-in-Chief, owned the strategy. The org chart caught up eventually.

Impact

Overview

Popular Mechanics is 103 years old. Legacy brands at that age tend to drift — every decision softens, every spread looks a little more like the last one. But every reader was still coming to the magazine for the same reason. Help me navigate my world.

Once that got clear, everything else followed. The paper airplane feature could fly across a spread. The Appalachian Trail piece could be a cinematic photo essay. The brain science story could look like it came from a research lab. Three completely different visual languages, one editorial promise. Every story getting the treatment it deserved because every story was doing the same job.

Strategy

Match the visual language to what the story is teaching. A how-to should feel like play. A profile should feel like a portrait. A science piece should feel like a lab notebook. The design system stopped being the star and became the invisible discipline that let each feature find its own voice without the magazine falling apart.

Match the treatment to the story

Every feature had to earn its own visual approach. Paper airplanes flying across a black spread with neon type because a how-to should feel like play. A hiker on the Appalachian Trail shot cinematically because a profile should feel like a portrait, not a caption. A brain science piece designed like a lab notebook because the reader needed to feel the rigor of what they were being taught. No two spreads looked alike because no two stories were teaching the same thing.

Real people, real trust

The photography did something the design system couldn't. It put a real person in every story. Boots that had been worn. Tools that had been used. Desks that were messy. The reader didn't just trust the navigation because the writing was good. They trusted it because they saw someone like them in the frame first.

Looking Back

The redesign held loyalty from 5.3M readers through a full transformation without churn. What I'd push harder for next time is treating the interactive game as the first of a franchise, not a one-off format. Once the audience learned to engage digitally on their terms, there was room to build a monthly interactive editorial slot that made the digital experience feel as necessary as the print. Proved the audience wanted it. Didn't push hard enough to make it permanent.

DUANE BRUTON        © 2026
Did I mention you have nice hair

Projects 
Play

Ideas
About