A Letter From The Publisher: Apr. 30, 1984

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The preceding page strikes a colorful new note and ushers in yet another editorial advancement in TIME. What you see there is a different kind of contents page, one designed to introduce each week's features with fresh impact and attractiveness. Nonetheless, this table of contents is only the most observable sign of a major change in TIME's composition that begins this week: the capability of producing four-color photographs or illustrations on every page that deals with the news.

TIME began publishing four-color editorial pages in March 1947, but for almost the next half decade such pages appeared only three or four times a year. They were time-consuming and expensive to produce and were confined mainly to such decorative and non-deadline subjects as art and travel. Their quality, by today's standards, would be graded with a gentleman's C at best.

But times change, and so has TIME. Up-to-the-minute, tonally accurate, four-color* news photos depict remote jungle battlefields and earthquake epicenters, political campaigns in city streets and satellite repairs in outer space. Until now, however, no newsmagazine has been able to employ four-color illustration throughout its news pages. It was often necessary to give up color photography in one section in order to gain it in another, or to confine articles that needed color to limited sections of the magazine.

For TIME's editors, this advance will mean increased flexibility in organizing each week's magazine. Says Art Director Rudy Hoglund: "Under the old limitations we became very adept at working out alternative strategies: a striking splash of one color like a red or blue in a diagram, for example, on pages where we needed four-color but could not have it. Now we can go with our first choice of an illustration, whatever its nature." Says Picture Editor Arnold Drapkin, who was hired 33 years ago to help produce weekly color sections for TIME: "It is unbelievable to have a range of options that was only a dream when I arrived in 1951."

This year TIME will run more than 100 "bonus" color pages in order to handle 1984's extraordinary journalistic webwork of domestic politics, Olympic Games and international turmoil. The introduction of full four-color capability will enable us to present these events with even greater drama, clarity and splendor.