You wouldn’t know it today, but The Bark originally started as an eight-page newsletter with minimal graphics. First published on a bare-bones budget in 1997 and distributed for free, its original purpose was to galvanize local support for a leash-free dog zone in Berkeley, Calif. The founders, Cameron Woo, an art director, and Claudia Kawczynska, a public policy person, never imagined their grassroots newsletter would one day be a four-color franchise.

“My partner and I had talked about doing a magazine for dog lovers and we noted that there wasn’t anything we thought was of interest out there,” Woo says. “But when we started the newsletter, oddly enough, we didn’t put the magazine idea and the newsletter together. The newsletter had a very specific function—to organize and inform people about establishing an off-leash park. When we started The Bark, we did not plan to evolve it into the magazine that it is today. It seems like an obvious thing, but it wasn’t in our thoughts at the time.”

Perhaps that’s why The Bark now has quite a bite. Woo and Kawczynska have let their venture grow organically—starting small and letting it find its own voice and personality. “We try to surprise people,” Woo says. “While you want to establish a consistent personality, I think in any relationship you have—if you equate that to a friend—it’s delightful when they surprise you. So, you choose to spend time with this friend based on personality and consistency, but what keeps it interesting are those surprises. If it’s always the same, those kinds of relationships dead-end.”

The first few issues of The Bark look very much like a community newsletter, especially when you compare the masthead with the current style. Although the transition from newsletter to magazine was gradual, Woo still faced several challenges early on. The first major change was in format, when The Bark went from traditional newsletter size to a tabloid. “By issue 3 or 4, we grew to a tabloid size and there was a printer in San Francisco that specialized in this. It afforded us more space and drove the look to be more interesting and more challenging.”

Woo says he saw The Bark as another outlet for his creative expression and he was never afraid to experiment. One of the things that made The Bark unique from the very beginning was Woo’s willingness to use illustration, soliciting artists who had a history of featuring canines in their work. This departure from what he considered staid and boring newsletter filler became part of the publication’s unique design direction.

Another motivating factor in favoring illustration was that it helped keep The Bark from focusing on specific breeds of dogs.

Community support
Beginning with the first newsletter in 1997, The Bark was born out of a need to galvanize the community in support of a leash-free dog zone. “Berkeley is a very community-activist area,” Woo says, “but it’s like anything else, whether it’s a PTA or an environmental group—once you get a group, you need a name, and then you need a newsletter.”

“If I’m doing a cheap black-and-white piece, I tend to use illustration,” Woo says. “I used so much photography in my corporate design work, I thought, ‘Let’s use illustration.’ Besides, if you start using [photos] of dogs then you are speaking to that one breed of dog, and I wanted to use something more universal. So I tended to use drawings that were the idea of a dog. And that carried over to the tabloid issues—I used a lot of illustrations.”

As the magazine’s circulation grew, Woo began to bring in more photos, especially on covers. He was concerned that illustrations might cause The Bark to look less like a dog magazine and more like, say, a literary magazine. While acknowledging that literary content is a component of the magazine, he says, “It was a very fine line in terms of how something would read. We tried more abstract covers, illustration-wise, and people would say, ‘What is that? Is it a dog?’ We understood that it needed to register very quickly that this is a dog magazine, and that pushed us toward using photography.” But he says the decision was timely: “I was actually running out of illustrators that I liked.”

Ultimately, Woo believes the reason why The Bark has captured dog-lovers’ attention is that the publication has a distinct character. He likens the relationship between his readers and the magazine to relationships in real life. “People associate themselves with the magazine and a big part of that is the personality. They rely on that consistency of personality. It distinguishes us from other publications, whether they are in our space or even in another medium.”

A publication, he says, has to quickly establish its personality, whether it’s serious, playful, or humorous. “You have to vie for people’s time and attention. If it has an attitude of some kind, it’s amazing how people will pick up on [it] and accept, embrace, or reject your magazine based on the subtlest of nuanced personality traits.”

Thanks to his continued commitment to keeping the personality of The Bark consistently captivating, Woo has found that you really can teach an old dog new tricks. He might even admit it’s true of himself as well.

About the author
Rodney J. Moore, a freelance journalist turned communications and PR strategist whose specialty is crafting and making media pitches for companies and individuals, is the founder of Moore Creative Communications. He is the author of Design Secrets: Layout, and he is working on his second nonfiction book.