ANDY NOWAK SUCCEEDS MARK TATARA AS BCM’S CREATIVE DIRECTOR

BY BOB JOHNSON

There are lots of reasons BCM is the industry’s best and most-trusted business magazine. We won’t reveal the No. 1 ingredient in BCM’s “magic sauce”; it’s never prudent to give away secrets. But tied for No. 2 and No. 3 are the magazine’s award-winning writing staff and its clean, reader-friendly design.

On the writing side, you may have heard that for the second consecutive year, BCM swept all the awards in the Business category of the International Bowling Media Association’s Writing Competition. We also picked up awards in the News and Feature categories.

What draws our readers into these stories is the design of the magazine, which Mark Tatara has been spearheading for several years. Mark, who came over to the BPAA staff along with Associate Publisher Barb Peltz and me when BCM was acquired from Luby Publishing, has a creative flair with layouts but never allowed the artwork to dominate the storytelling. He has always known how to strike the perfect balance between “show” and substance.

Now, Mark has decided to pursue his true passion in life: building things out of wood and helping others do the same, working for a Chicago lumber supplier.

“We have lumber for guitars and various other instruments, heirloom furniture makers, cabinet makers and everyday folks who want to fix up their home with quality timber and trim,” Mark says. “The diverse group of people that walk through our doors every day is truly amazing to me.”

Mark had been thinking about making a change for a while, in part because working on this magazine is not a 40-hours-per-week job. When he finally decided that the time had come, our first reaction was to panic. But then Barb thought of the man Mark had succeeded at Luby Publishing: Andy Nowak.

Also an extremely talented graphic artist, Andy had left Luby in 2014 after seven years with the company. Fortunately, after close to nine years of designing catalogs, first for The Land of Nod and then for Crate and Barrel, he was ready for a change. He joined BPAA and BCM officially on July 5, just in time to wrap up work on the August issue of the magazine.

We can’t thank Mark Tatara enough for the talent and dedication he brought to his work for BCM. We can’t wait to see what Andy Nowak has in mind as he slips into some very big shoes. And we feel blessed to have experienced a relatively smooth transition with a critical aspect of BCM’s success.