Yipes! A bit more space on the page for an editor’s column! What should I do with these extra words?

As I scribe here, 20/20 Magazine is moving to a new office in the West Village of NYC. So for this last month, my co-workers have noted me standing and staring at the shelves of 20/20 bound volumes capturing a proud publishing heritage of nearly 50 years. In trying to figure out a new home for these booked issues, I couldn’t help reading and reviewing countless pages of my past (having started as editor-in-chief in 1998) as well as the visual and verbal tapestry of the formative years of this publication that has stayed true to its original mission statement of “delivering perfect vision to the optical arena” in an evolutionary manner that flourishes even now in the constantly changing world of a print AND digital missive.

This particular issue of December gives functioning opportunity for me to note where we are right now by way of accolades to the 20/20 edit and art team at hand.

Interesting to note that this is the first year we’ve devoted a solid proportion of this issue’s content to the “Learning and Experience” aspect of what  20/20 does in a leadership position with education (via our monthly CEs) and seasoned eyecare professional input (powerful monthly ECP content on the Pro to Pro pages) as tag teamed by Director of Education Deborah Kotob and Pro to Pro Managing Editor Linda Colin. I learn from these women daily and hope you do as well.

There’s so much to say when it comes to both Art Director Iris Johnson and Executive Editor Christine Yeh (both recently teamed up to cover SILMO and conquer Paris in the rain!)—but let me be more specific this month in considering the challenge they face each month fine tuning the professional writing of the CEs and Pro to Pro in order to fulfill the technical aspects of the content in a manner that is engagingly reader friendly and highly visual. I constantly witness this in awe.

The ongoing discovery of new eyewear vendors (especially in the Independent segment of the market) has been a fascination for me since the beginning of my gig here. And back in the day, I thought of myself as pretty good at that quest but my investigative and imaginative powers of discovery dim greatly in light of what Senior Associate Editor Victoria Garcia and Associate Editor Jillian Urcelay deliver in new ways every day on this aspect of eyewear anew. Their New Products, What’s New and What’s Next pages every issue testify to the uniquely growing realm of exciting new eyewear. And their personalEYEzed features in print, digitally and on social media ditto that deed.

Don’t worry Andy Karp… I didn’t and could never forget you in your constant  20/20 AND Vision Monday Group leadership expertise (or should I say RxPertise!) when it comes to all things Lens AND Tech related. And how appropriate that this month, you open Upfront with one of your L&T tales well told.

With 20/20's bound volumes in hand, this whole team is bound for your future in this optisphere.

James J. Spina
Editor-in-Chief
[email protected]