Volume 68, Number 2 (2015) Spring

When in 1999 the Dean of Naval Warfare Studies, then Dr. Alberto Coll, decided that the Naval War College Review required, among other improvements, a new look, he led an exhaustive search for the right graphic designer. After interviewing over almost a year representatives of twenty-four firms from as far away as Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, he found the perfect solution close to home—David Chapman, of the firm Chapman and Partners, then of Providence, Rhode Island, later of Warren. There followed a careful and collaborative process of gathering inputs, studying existing materials, and producing trials and studies for consideration. The new design was “launched” with the Autumn 2000 issue, at a ceremony attended by the President of the Naval War College, Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski.

The new design, refined over succeeding issues, endures today—a testament to the creativity, ingenuity, and sensitivity to the needs of readers, editors, and compositors that were built in from the outset. Over several years of consultancy Mr. Chapman also produced related designs, also still in use, for the Newport Papers, Historical Monographs, and Policy Studies book series of the Naval War College Press, as well as the China Maritime Studies publications of the College’s China Maritime Studies Institute. The cover recalls (with informal input from Mr. Chapman, who is now semiretired) a design produced in 2000 against days when the Review might be obliged to abandon cover art entirely (which fortunately has not happened) or be unable to arrange suitable art for individual issues (an option that was never used—but perhaps should have been, once or twice).